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Novak Djokovic Cracks Up
By Sean Rudolph
© Mark Peterson/Corleve
(August 12, 2010) Breaking up is hard to do unless you're Novak Djokovic in which case losing your head is one way of putting your mind back on track. At 4-3 in the second set of Djokovic's 7-5, 7-5 Rogers Cup win over Julien Benneteau on Wednesday, festering frustration, sweltering heat and the struggle to control his wayward shots conspired to cause the second-seeded Serbian to crack up.
Djokovic wound up and smashes his Head racquet to the court, creating a crumbled, mangled mess of contorted frame and string where the head once was.
Cracking up was cathartic for the 2007 Rogers Cup champion who said later losing his Head calmed his head. Djokovic raised his hard-court record to 16-4 on the season.
"It’s never been a problem for me to smash a racquet," Djokovic said. "But I kind of tend to have this positive reaction after that. My head kind of cools off after I break the racquet, even though it probably looks ugly to the fans, or interesting. But I definitely get a little more, I don’t know, relief after I do that."
Emotion has long been a part of Djokovic's on-court persona and his tendency to take injury timeouts has drawn criticism from opponents in the past, including Tommy Robredo who accused Djokovic of "doing the show that he cannot run" after a US Open loss. Djokovic counters that expressing emotion is simply part of his passion for the game.
"I’m a person who plays with a lot of emotions and was just brought up in a country where we are very temperamental and emotional so if I don’t have emotions for this sport, I wouldn’t play it," Djokovic said.
Executing his equipment may sometimes inspire Djokovic, but a great concern is his ability to cope with hot conditions. At times, Djokovic, who called for the trainer at one point and wandered around the baseline gulping deep breaths of air, looked like a man who had just completed a half-marathon only to be informed he had more miles to run.
Djokovic has retired from Grand Slam matches in the past due to heat-related fatigue. Can his body withstand the conditions in Toronto, next week in Cincinnati and the often oppressively muggy conditions that can come the first week of the US Open?
"It’s definitely not easy on the days where you have over 30C and the court adds up another 10 degrees, or 15, and it absorbs the heat, the hard court," Djokovic said. "I might react to the heat differently than somebody else so you cannot compare myself to another player. You know, I might be faster than somebody for some reason. It’s just genetics and nature, I guess...It’s just something that you cannot fight against. Nobody can turn off the sun and just do me a favor, even though I would like it."
Conditioning should not be a factor for Djokovic today as he takes on 54th-ranked Romanian Victor Hanescu in a match scheduled to start not before 5 p.m. on the Grand Stand court. Djokovic is 4-0 lifetime vs. the 29-year-old frmo Bucharest, including a four-set win in their most recent meeting at Roland Garros in May.
The winner of that match will play sixth-seeded Nikolay Davydenko or Frenchman Jeremy Chardy in the quarterfinals.
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