Mailbag: Novak Djokovic's New Weeks at No. 1 Ranking Record

Hey everyone. Next up on the podcast is USTA CEO Mike Dowse. There’s a full boat of events this week, including the return of Roger Federer in Doha. But let’s start with Djokovic….

Mailbag

Have a question or comment for Jon? Email him at jon_wertheim@yahoo.com or tweet him @jon_wertheim.

Jon, I woke up Monday to the news that Novak Djokovic surpassed Roger Federer’s record for Most Weeks at No. 1, 311 weeks. How much should this matter in the GOAT debate?
—Sam, Brooklyn

• Let’s table the GOAT debate for a moment and just consider the magnitude of this achievement. For 311 weeks—with no end in sight, by the way—Djokovic has topped the rankings. Not only is that six full years atop the heap. It’s a heap that includes Federer and Nadal, the two guys ahead of him in the majors rankings, but behind him in the rolling rankings.

There’s something inherently unsexy about the rankings record. It’s based on this cold and clinical data, the rolling 52-system, that fans don’t always understand in the best of times, never mind in COVID times. There is no crowning, confrontational moment. Djokovic was likely asleep when we established this record. There is no singular visual—you don’t splay yourself on the court or lift your arms aloft when you achieve this.

Yet you could make a case that this record is the clearest indication of greatness. It doesn’t represent excellence. It confirms it, objective data revealing that you are the best. Over time. Over surfaces. It is testament to consistency, versatility, bodily health; mental strength; it encompasses lapses and surges. I enjoyed this piece on the ATP’s website. If Djokovic is making his GOAT case, he would do well to start with this data point. Or 311.

Rod Laver's 1961 Wimbledon defeat of Chuck McKinley in the Wimbledon final took all of 55 minutes. And that match went 26 games. Just a little over two minutes per game! No toweling off (who'd have needed it?), no TV commercials, a different style of play with different equipment on a dodgy surface and a different level of behavior expected of the players. 26 years later, Ivan Lendl's triple bagel win in the U.S. Open first round took 71 minutes, almost twice as long per game. Stefan Edberg's triple bagel at Wimbledon that year lasted an hour.
—Elsie Misbourne, Washington D.C.

• Very good. I would like to see some comprehensive data on the COVID Opens—when we saw reduced time devoted to toweling off; and technology that eliminated protracted arguments over officiating; and perhaps an overall diminishing of theatrics caused by the absence of fans.

A lot of factors impact time of match. Pace of play for the individual players, obviously. (Medvedev and Federer and Kyrgios play quickly. Nadal and Djokovic do not.) Style of play. Deuce games. But I would also encourage caution with this stat, because everything from injury time-outs to protracted arguments to roof closure time counts. When tennis gets its data game together, we should be able to refine this. Telling us “how long the ball was actually in play” would be a start.

So I was thinking the other day that two of the greatest tennis players ever, Nadal and Djokovic, are, like, ALWAYS injured. And I'm trying to figure out what that means for tennis as a sport. I can't think of any other sport in which the greatest players include two guys who are injury prone and missed substantial time during their careers because of injury. (Then there's a guy like DelPo who might have been great but is also always injured and it's ruined his career.) Is tennis great because these guys can still achieve all-time greatness even though their bodies are always broken? Or does it make tennis kind of lame and less athletic because these fragile guys are so successful? Or is there some other way of looking at it?
—P.

• And, of course, you submitted the question the week Federer is back after knee surgery, ending a year-plus absence. And Andy Murray is, rightly, declaring that he wants to continue on, despite playing with a metal rod on his leg.

I’m of mixed minds here. First, we’re talking about athletes. If these were chronically injured, say, florists, it would be one thing; but in the case of the Big Three, theirs is a profession that entails exertion and physical activity. Injuries are part of the proposition. Especially when you play deep into your 30s. Fortunately, each of the aforementioned can manage his injuries, seek expert care, and manipulate a work schedule accordingly. (Aside: after enduring so much, each knows their bodies intimately, and can discern a tweak from a whoa-I-need-to-withdraw injury….an advantage they sometimes have over the opponent.)

All that said, it’s too easy for tennis’ leaders to say simply (as I just did), “It’s sports and injuries are part of the drill. Always were and always will be.” And abdicate responsibility. Yes, it’s great that careers are longer and the Big Three and Serena can enjoy careers literally twice as long as their predecessors. But I often feel tennis is way too cavalier about injuries. Their causes. The distribution of surfaces. Technology. Demands placed on players. The frequency with which health and wellness match results. Data is hard to collect. (Withdrawals or mid-match retirements don’t tell the story. Neither does surgeries-per-player.) But anecdotally, I’d contend that too many players are getting hurt too often. And too few in positions of power seem to mind. Speaking of…

Hi Jon. What ever happened to Jerzy Janowicz?
—Kelly G., Louisville, K.Y.

• He’s only 30. And he still has a ranking. And he was beating some decent players as recently as a year ago. And was working with Gunther Bresnik recently. But he’s had multiple knee surgeries and it’s been a long road back. Speaking of tennis in Poland, note this new event.

For Petros Tsitsipas to get a wildcard into the main draw of singles in the Open 13 Provence in France is absolutely ridiculous. Did Stefanos Tsitsipas and his family threaten the tournament director that if they want him to play then he has to give his brother a spot in the singles main draw? Petros's highest ranking has been close to a thousand in singles, which is awesome when looking at it worldwide but for a pro is pretty poor. None of the other superstars with brothers with much less talent have tried to manipulate the draw in this way, unless I am wrong about draw being manipulated to get Stefanos to play with his large appearance fee. John McEnroe, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Sascha Zverev have never used their superstar status to get their brothers into the singles main draw unless I made an error. Mischa Zverev and Patrick McEnroe being most successful out of the brothers have earned their way by getting up to No. 25 and No. 28 ranking in singles in a good number of tournaments. I do not believe they were given singles wildcards into tournaments when their ranking was not good enough because of who their brother is.
—Sunny S., Philadelphia

• Sunny is Sunil. But I suspect that if I had a dollar for every time our correspondent heard an “Always Sunny in Philadelphia” reference…why, I could afford to go behind the Sports Illustrated paywall. Maybe I could even afford to pay an appearance fee. Especially in COVID when prices have dropped—and other inducements and accommodations must be made.

In truth there is a history of package deals. And Tsitsipas is hardly the only sibling to play this card. Andre Agassi was known ask for an additional wild card for events, not for a family member but for his sparring partner, Sargis Sargsian. Look through assorted 250 draws and you will see siblings, sometimes in doubles draws. Be assured they did not get in on the basis of their ranking.

The real issue is the tyranny of wild cards. We rail against them all the time. But they spit—Benoit Paire style—in the face of fairness. If tournaments want a mechanism for including last-minute entries or returning stars, fine. But giving someone’s rightfully earned draw spot to someone barely in the top-1,000 is offensive. With the Miami Open upon us, it’s a reminder—and blatant example of tennis’ corrosive conflicts—how offensive it is that this tournament’s wild cards tend to go only to players represented by IMG, which also owns the event.

I'd rather add a cocktail of wasabi, red chili, habanero and ghost pepper sauce with my latte in the morning, than watch a documentary about Marcelo Rios.

From swearing at kids who ask for his autograph to insulting Seles by talking about her weight, when standing in line to get into the courts at Wimbledon, there are stories hundreds of the same ilk. Petty and puerile middle schoolers look like elder states(wo)men standing next to Rios. I had forgotten about him for decades, thanks for reminding us about him Jon.
—Deepak, New York

• Making a documentary doesn’t entail canonizing the guy or planing his rough edges. In fact, I’d suggest the opposite. If there’s video for some of the stories you reference—add in the brawl with the Rome cab driver, the Miami match with Agassi, the Wayne Bryan kids clinic—it would make for cackling television. We’re telling stories here; we’re not rehabilitating images if the facts suggest otherwise.

Hi Jon, someone most people have forgotten is Nikolay Davydenko. Nikolay is one of those unfortunates who played during Roger Federer's prime. Nikolay would breeze through a tournament without dropping a set, come up against Roger in a quarterfinal or semifinal, and then have his hat handed to him in quickest possible terms. It always seemed to me to show the vast, vast gulf between other top players and Federer at the time. Nikolay would just be breezing, destroying his opponents, and then Roger would always make him look like an inept beginner, turning all of Davydenko's strengths against him. I thought that if Federer did not exist, Nikolay Davydenko would have won at least three or four of the Grand Slam events, and many other tournaments besides. I do not know if he was able to ever get past Federer, and against all others he was an opponent to be feared.
—Eric of Myrtle Beach (no longer of Jackson Heights)

• There was a time when Davydenko was a He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named type, a player tainted by match-fixing. Whatever his tennis achievements, no one wanted to discuss the guy because inevitably it led to a reference about undermining competition. (Sidebar: read the ATP’s meticulously worded statement “clearing” Davydenko and draw your own conclusions. Finding no evidence of wrongdoing is obviously something quite different from an outright exoneration.)

You raise a good point. There exists an entire class of players who seemed to exist for the simple sake of accentuated the greatness of the Big Three. Davydenko, Ferrer, Berdych, Tsonga, Roddick, for a long time Dominic Thiem….there are dozens of outstanding players—likely multiple major winners in other eras—who did their thing, won plenty of 250 and 500 titles….and then proved no match for the Troika of Excellence.

I have a question. With all the talk in the NBA about The Logo, who is The ATP Logo? Karsten Braasch with the Marlboro brushed out?
—@redbirdcraig

• I smell a contest. First, one of you messaged me as asking if anyone else saw a skeleton in the new WTA logo? But what were some rejected ATP logos? Three figures standing and a mass of players doing the We’re-not-worthy genuflection? A generic player with early-aughts top-knot? The Agassi mullet? The kneeling Borg?

Shots, Miscellany

• From The New York Times: College Sports Can Be Exploitive. They Can Also Be a Lifeline.

• Footsteps of Federer: A Fan's Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 Acts

• More tennis books, this from the great Richard Evans:

• What do we make of Nicolas Kicker coming off the banned list and being gifted a wild card? Enrique Quique Cano has this.

• The “Random Encounters” stories keep coming and we’ll keep posting periodically. And they are great: This is from Chris:

I'd almost forgotten that I too have a fan story. Autumn of 2007, my partner and I met up with his parents at a chic hotel in Mill Valley, north of the Golden Gate Bridge. As we headed out to dinner, I spotted Jana Novotna in the lobby. I whispered excitedly, "That woman is the 1998 Wimbledon champion. She was an incredible tennis player!" My mother-in-law, noted color consultant Lee Eiseman, said: "Go introduce yourself! When are you going to have another chance?" So I did; I approached Ms. Novotna and told her I was a big fan and loved watching her play. She was kind and gracious and told me she was in town to play an exhibition including Lindsay Davenport and others and suggested I might enjoy it. Alas, I had other plans. It would have been wonderful to see her play in person. One thing that struck me was her physique; she was both very slim, almost skinny, and also looked like she could bend steel in her bare hands. An elite athlete's body. Amazing. And a lovely person.

• Here’s this week’s reader riff. Take us out with Michael Chang, Matt….

The recent posts about Michael Chang being one of the best to not reach No. 1 sprung to my mind that one of the most indelible images in my tennis life was his brother and coach, Carl, sitting alone in the massive, brand new Arthur Ashe Stadium after his desultory defeat at the hands of Patrick Rafter in the 1997 semifinals. Prior to that match, from 1995-1997 Chang had made three major finals, including the prior U.S. Open, as well as two additional semis in Australia. Going into that match he would have played the streaky, unseeded Rusedski in the final, and would have been the prohibitive favorite. Not exactly sure why that always stuck with me, but perhaps it's because I don't ever recall a coach, friend, or significant other sitting that way for so long after a tennis stadium (or any sport?) has cleared out. I couldn't find an image on the internet, but the NYT reported this:

"The loss hurt so much that Chang's brother and coach, Carl—aware that No. 1 Pete Sampras and every other seeded player except Rafter was out of this star-crossed men's draw—sat alone in Arthur Ashe Stadium long after everyone else had left. Carl Chang's mourning, which included the bad memory of his brother's uncharacteristic failure to convert any of the eight break chances he had, was of a different sort than Rusedski's yesterday. While the tightly knit Chang family eventually pried Carl out of the stadium and went home to rue what went wrong at this Open, Rusedski soldiered ahead into the final against Rafter, who seemed to be the only happy player in the place yesterday."

Carl's solemn reflection in that moment proved prescient. Chang never moved past the third round at another major. Still, what a tremendous career and setting aside he's mostly known for his French Open win, he was one of the best hard-courters of his era. And, his loss to Rafter doesn't look so bad in hindsight.