I keep thinking about Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros — and not because I expect him to win it.
Honestly, he probably won’t. He is 39 years old, and he came into the second major of the year without a single win on clay this season. In Rome he was visibly ill, vomiting between games, and fell in three sets in his opening match to a 20-year-old Croatian qualifier named Dino Prizmic — who has been very upfront about the fact that the Serb is his idol.
Djokovic hasn’t played since. He arrived in Paris with a year-to-date clay-court record of 0-1.
That’s likely not the campaign of a man who is going to win seven matches, including one against prohibitive favorite Jannik Sinner. He might even run into some difficulty in the third round, when he is slated to face either Prizmic or the wildly popular Joao Fonseca from Brazil.
There is no Carlos Alcaraz in the way this fortnight. The Spaniard is out with a wrist injury — but Djokovic’s draw is still intimidating, perhaps the toughest quarter of all. And should he defy the odds (and his age), Sinner looms large — an Italian wall of young legs and precision ball-striking who comes into Paris on a 29-match winning streak.
But (there’s always a but)….
It’s Novak Djokovic. The normal rules don’t apply.
He owns 24 Grand Slam titles, 10 Australian Opens, seven Wimbledons, four U.S. Opens, and three French Opens. He is the second man in the Open Era to have completed the Career Golden Slam. The Olympic gold medal eluded the Serb for years, but he finally dispatched Alcaraz in two tiebreakers in the gold medal match at the Paris Olympics at age 37. And if he wins Roland Garros this year, he becomes the first man in history to have won every major at least four times. Let me say that again: every major four times. Federer won the French Open once. Nadal, for all his historic work on clay, won Wimbledon twice and the Australian Open twice. No one has done what Djokovic is one trophy away from doing.
He is also one of only three men ever to beat Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, and the only one to do it twice. Robin Soderling did it once in 2009. Alexander Zverev did it once in 2024, against a Nadal who could barely walk (it’s a loss that counts technically but nowhere else). Djokovic did it in the 2015 quarterfinal and again in the 2021 semifinal, on his way to the title each time. Two wins against the greatest clay-courter who ever lived — on effectively his home court.
So here we are in 2026, and the kid who used to be the third wheel in the Big Three conversation is the only one of them still playing. Sinner and Alcaraz are out there sharing the majors between them; they’re both at the top of their games (when healthy), and they’re both very young. Djokovic is neither. But he is (and this is the part I refuse to stop reminding people of) very often still standing on the second weekend of each major. He made the semifinal of last year’s Roland Garros. He made the final in Melbourne THIS year. In short, he is still a factor when it really matters.
He might lose in the first week in Paris (although I wouldn’t count on it. That’s just not something Djokovic does, despite the number of wins he has coming in or how relatively poorly he plays). He might also make the quarterfinals, semis, or even the final — and force Sinner to actually beat him. I don’t know. Neither does he, judging by his press conferences. But a fourth French Open would be the punctuation on a career that has redefined what is possible in tennis.
Whether he gets it this year or not, I cannot count him out. Nobody who knows tennis can.
Federer and Nadal were the box office draw in tennis no doubt about it
I think the point Tennis Fan was making was there’s no need to put Rafa down in favour of Novak