I have a great deal of respect for Novak Djokovic for a lot of reasons. At 38 years old he is defying all the odds by not just remaining in the sport, but remaining at the top tier level even though his participation in events is extremely limited to the point where many people refer to him as a "part time tennis professional."
He doesn't do any minor events and at least in the last few years, he has seen his elimination in tournaments albeit near the end in the quarter or semi-finals and normally at the hands of Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz who are the number 2 and number 2 globally rated players in the world.
Yesterday's thriller of a match vs Jannik Sinner started out exactly like everyone thought it would, with Sinner controlling the match and winning the first set 6-3 in what appeared to be rather easy fashion.
I admit that because it was so late for me (we are on the other side of the planet from Australia where the event is taking place) that I stopped watching at that point and man oh man do I wish that I hadn't. In a dramatic turn of events, the two exchanged sets until it was 2 sets each and setting up a 5th set that proved to be one of the greatest displays of tennis ever with Djokovic breaking Sinner's serve very early on in the set.
If you have a chance and can find it (tennis can be difficult to find highlights of due to copyright) the final game of the final set is one for the ages.
Djokovic is serving for match point and manages to get up to 40-15 and it simply looks like it is in the bag and the fans of Djokovic are on their feet already celebrating a come from behind an surprise victory, only to have sinner win 2 points straight to make 40-40 People sat down at that point.
There isn't a great deal of enthusiasm towards Jannik Sinner and the crowd was definitely on Nole's side at this point and thankfully Novak was able to win the next two points in style and win the semi-final to near deafening applause.
There's a lot of reasons to dislike Sinner, and for me a lot of it is the seemingly preferential treatment that he receives. It wasn't that long ago that he got busted for PED's twice in the same season before he faced a ban and his ban was a very limited one whereas had it been anyone else, it likely would have been for a much longer time. Worse than the PED use was the excuse that the man himself gave to the press stating that it was an accident and it was just a cream that they picked up in a foreign country for sore knees and didn't realize that it had a steroid in it. I mean, if that happened one time fair enough, but TWICE? Sorry bub, that's bullcrap and you know it. Plus, it isn't like the world number 1 tennis player is wandering into random pharmacies and just pulling random products off the shelf, he knew what he was doing.
The heat of the tennis governing body is Italian, and so is Sinner, so there's a lot of talk about how he gets treated better because of this. Of course this is all raw speculation and there are no real ties to this being true. Italians are often the head of a lot of things and it is most likely a coincidence. But there are other reason people dislike him as well: He is robotic on the court and rarely shows any sort of emotion, he doesn't have moments of celebration and even celebrating his own victories seems like he doesn't really care. There's also the fact that he is a ginger and well, that's reason enough right there (joke.)
I think the main reason why people dislike him is because he regularly defeats their favorite players and basically dominates the field. Many supposed up-and-comers have their dreams of titles squashed, particularly Americans who haven't had a real tennis star in quite some time, because once they face Sinner in the brackets, it's near certain they are going home that day.
The oddsmakers didn't give Djokovic a chance in this one. If you put a $100 bet on Novak Djokovic before the match began, you were receiving $5 on winning that bet. The reverse was nearly true in early betting as well yet not many people bet on Djokovic. Some of the larger betting websites had Nole as a +900 or even more underdog and when this happens it means that the experts in the gambling industry believe it is a lock. I would love to know if anyone put a substantial amount of money on Djokovic because they would have made a lot of that.
As always, Djokovic was very gracious in victory thanking Jannik Sinner for "letting him have this one."
The betting odds for the final are as you would expect, in favor of world number 1 Carlos Alcarez but much sloer now after that unreal performance on the 38-year old's part. He is an average of a +250 underdog and that's quite the jump from one match to the next. One thing to keep in mind is that Alcaraz started favoring his right leg from sets 3-5 vs Alexander Zerev and surprisingly, the significantly older Novak Djokovic hasn't shown any signs of slowdown in a physical sense at any point in this tournament.
I'm just hoping that the final is a good match and not a blowout. Never count Djokovic out is the moral of the story here.
An interesting piece of information. If Novak wins the match he will be the oldest person to have ever won a tennis men's major, if Alcaraz wins he will become the youngest person ever to pull off a Grand Slam. Regardless of what happens, history will be made.