There was nonetheless no shortage of drama as Djokovic, the third seed, kept his quest for a record 23rd grand slam title on track at Roland Garros with a 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 victory over Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

Having stirred controversy earlier in the week by scrawling a political message on a TV camera lens, and then quipped that he was “trying to impersonate Iron Man” after cameras picked up a nanotechnology patch fixed to his chest during his win over Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics, Djokovic offered a reminder here that he is indeed made of tough stuff. 

Davidovich Fokina, seeded 29th and 13 years Djokovic’s junior, defeated the Serb in their only previous meeting, last year in Monte Carlo, and once again he subjected the world No 3 to the sternest of examinations. Djokovic spent much of the match digging balls out of either corner as the flamboyant Spaniard unleashed a relentless baseline barrage, interspersing his assault with moonballs, lobs and some exquisite drop shots. 

Davidovich Fokina, a quarter-finalist at Roland Garros two years ago, served for the first set and had a set point in the second. Had he made good on the latter opportunity, the battle would probably have raged well into the evening. But Djokovic is rarely found wanting at the big moments, and he stepped up to win a controlled and obdurate 18-stroke rally that left Davidovich Fokina exhausted and hunched over on the baseline, gasping for air. 

Djokovic being Djokovic, the drama did not there.

With the ensuing tiebreak won, the two-time champion celebrated wildly, raising hackles in the stands with a fist-punching 360-degree twirl. A chorus of boos rang out, and there were further jeers when Djokovic subsequently took a medical timeout for treatment on his left leg. It was a bizarre moment: Davidovich Fokina had left the court for a bathroom break, so the Serb was not delaying the resumption of play. But the Parisian crowd, which derided Taylor Fritz long and loud after his victory over the Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech the previous evening, famously marches to the beat of its own drum.

“They are people, they’re groups or whatever, that love to boo every single thing you do,” said Djokovic. “That’s something that I find disrespectful and I frankly don’t understand that. 

“But it’s their right. They paid the ticket. They can do whatever they want. At times I will stay quiet. Not at times, actually, 99% of the time I will stay quiet. Sometimes I will oppose that, because I feel when somebody is disrespectful, you know, he or she deserves to have an answer to that.”

Asked whether the treatment he received was for a specific injury, Djokovic declined to elaborate. He did, however, offer a candid insight into his physical state at this stage of his career.

“We don’t have much time to start to name the many injuries I have, and the list is quite long,” said Djokovic. “I don’t want to sit here and talk about these things that are not preventing me from playing.

“These are the circumstances that you, as a professional athlete, have to deal with. Accept it. Sometimes you need help from the physio during the match. Sometimes you need pills. Sometimes you need help from the god or angels, sometimes you just have to deal with the reality.”

With a two-set lead established in gruelling fashion, Djokovic moved through the gears relatively swiftly in the third, breaking twice without reply to seal victory. It was nonetheless the longest three-set match of his career at a major, eclipsing his defeat to Korea’s Hyeon Chung at the 2018 Australian Open by 15 minutes. Despite his chequered build-up to Roland Garros, which included an elbow injury and defeats to Lorenzo Musetti in Monte Carlo, fellow Serb Dusan Lajovic in Banja Luka, and Holger Rune in Rome, Djokovic has yet to drop a set. Nor can he complain that he has not had the chance to play himself into form. 

“I don’t remember when I played last time three hours, two sets,” said Djokovic. “If I lost one of the first two sets, it was looking like it was going to go four, five hours.

“It was a day and conditions that were, I think, very challenging for both players physically. Lots of exchanges. Serve was really not an advantage for either of us. It was cat and mouse every single point, trying to outsmart your opponent. 

“We were doing a lot of running. Not just left, right, but forward and backward, especially when he was playing from that end where he was playing against the wind, he was drop-shotting a lot. He was making me work for every point. 

“I just have to be, in the end of the day when I draw a line, very content to win this match in three sets.”

There was no such comfort for Andrey Rublev, who let a two-set lead slip as he was undone by Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego on Court Suzanne Lenglen.

Sonego, into the fourth round of a major for the first time, will face Karen Khachanov next after the Russian 11th seed prevailed 6-4, 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7-5) against Australia’s Thanasi Kokkinakis on Court Simonne Mathieu.

“I played, I think, my best tennis this year,” said Sonego, the world No 48. “There were a lot of things in my mind, but I tried to stay focused every point and enjoy the moment.

“Obviously a big emotional moment for me and for my team, for my family.”

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A few feet away, arms outstretched in triumph as he lay prone on the clay following a 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) victory, was Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek third seed, who outwitted and outclassed the 46th-ranked Davidovich Fokina to end his opponent’s fairytale run in the principality and retain his Monte Carlo Masters crown. 

The eighth title of Tsitsipas’s career – and first since he triumphed on the clay courts of Lyon last spring – leaves him in elite company. Only Rafael Nadal, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Thomas Muster, Bjorn Borg and Ilie Nastase have previously won back-to-back titles in the principality. It is quite the roll call of former world No 1s, although the glaring difference between Tsitsipas and his feted forerunners is that while they have all won Roland Garros at least once, the Greek is yet to make the breakthrough at grand slam level.

A second Masters 1000 title nonetheless marks an encouraging first step on the road to Paris, where Tsitsipas finished runner-up to Novak Djokovic last summer, and a welcome return to form for the 23-year-old after an indifferent US hard-court swing. It was also a reminder that Tsitsipas, whose lengthy wardrobe changes and frequent coaching violations have been a source of irritation to opponents and onlookers alike, is an exceptional talent whose lofty aspirations remain achievable, even if he has fallen behind the likes of Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev over the past 10 months or so.  

“I’m always trying to bring the best I can from clay and adjust accordingly to the other surfaces,” said Tsitsipas, who defeated Zverev in the semi-finals and had also won both his previous encounters with Davidovich Fokina, most recently when the Spaniard extended him to a third set a couple of months ago in Rotterdam.

“I really want to be doing well on hard and grass this year, because I feel like I can really get a lot of points there. If I’m able to win matches with the same consistency I do on this surface, I think I have a big chance of finishing the year of the top two, which is a huge goal of mine to be finally there and belong in that special group of players.”

For Davidovich Fokina, it was perhaps one match too far. The potency of Tsitsipas’s serving, allied with his variety of shot and tactical intelligence, slowly squeezed the life out of the 22-year-old, for whom an early break proved a false dawn as Tsitsipas hit back immediately to level at 2-2 before running away with four of the next five games. 

Yet what a week it has been for Davidovich Fokina, whose reward for a run that included wins over world No 1 Novak Djokovic and Taylor Fritz, the 10th seed, will be measured not only in renewed belief that reaching the French Open quarter-finals last year was no fluke, but also in a career-high ranking of 27th. He has won plenty of new admirers, too, with his heart, humility and penchant for flinging himself across the terre batue like a teenage Boris Becker endearing him to the crowd, from whom he received clamorous support.  

“For me, this week with my team was amazing, said Davidovich Fokina, who was forced to retire against Tsitsipas with a thigh injury in last year’s quarter-finals. “It was a dream come true to play here in Monte Carlo, [with a] full crowd. You know, to hear the people’s supporting was amazing. I was at the bench thinking, ‘Wow, what a moment.’

“How I manage this week, beating these guys and how much confidence I have now… I will be focused like this week every point, every game. Doesn’t matter who it is, I will enjoy every moment now. It doesn’t matter if I lose or if I win, I’m so happy with what I am doing and I just [want] to keep on that line.”

From a characteristically belligerent fightback by Djokovic to a potentially fatal lapse of focus as he served for a place in the final against Grigor Dimitrov on Saturday afternoon, Davidovch Fokina has survived all manner of setbacks over the past week. Not least among those was his impressive recovery from a set down in the quarter-finals against 10th seed Taylor Fritz, a heartening precedent as he stepped up to serve at the start of the second set. But as Davidovich Fokina sprayed errors off both wings to fall further behind, the momentum was firmly with Tsitsipas who, by the time he completed a swift hold to consolidate the break, had won 20 of the preceding 24 points. It was like watching a Ferrari overtake a bulldozer.

But the Spaniard, the son of a former boxer, is nothing if not a fighter, and when he held in the next game he let out a defiant roar. Davidovich Fokina had spoken before his semi-final of how he used to dream of competing at the tournament as a child, and of how his progress through the draw had made him realise “Wow, I can be there”. Now that newfound sense of belonging began to show. A flying backhand approach set up two break points in the next game, and when a Tsitsipas mishit drew him level, there was another explosion of emotion from the Spaniard.

Now it was game on, Davidovich Fokina launching himself at his groundstrokes, chasing lost causes, producing an astonishing backhand winner at full stretch. Tsitsipas accepted the proffered gauntlet, doubling down from the baseline to bring up two break points in the ninth game only to see Davidovich Fokina cancel out both in crushing style. Unperturbed, the Greek persisted, fashioning a third which he converted with an untameable crosscourt forehand. Tsitsipas would serve for the title.

Still Davidovich Fokina was not done. Tsitsipas had lost his way against Diego Schwartzman from 6-2, 5-2 up and almost lost the match; why not again? A stunning backhand pass gave the challenger a foothold in the game, and he milked the moment for all it was worth, waving his arms wildly to stoke up further frenzy in the stands. The crowd needed little encouragement, and when Davidovich Fokina pounded away an overhead to seal the break, a third set began to look a real possibility. An inevitable coaching code violation did little to improve the outlook for Tsitsipas, but he kept a cool head and played a clinical tiebreak as his opponent’s overexuberance drew him into error.

“He fought in moments that I didn’t really expect him to fight,” said Tsitsipas on court afterwards. “He’s someone that can always hit incredible winners out of nowhere and play extremely unpredictably. But I was able to really minimise that as much as I could today. I knew he could be a dangerous opponent, I’ve played him before. 

“I’m proud of myself. I believe that’s a great win. And I’m very sure that we’re going to see good results from him in the future, he’s someone that can really compete against the top guys.”

As Roland Garros hoves into view, Tsitsipas will hope the same proves true of himself in the weeks ahead.  

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Between them, Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev had toiled for five hours and 50 minutes on Friday to make the last four. Both bore the scars. Zverev, the second seed, had to grapple with a thigh problem and a wildly partisan crowd before subduing the determined challenge of local favourite Jannik Sinner. Tsitsipas, meanwhile, effectively had to win his match against Diego Schwartzman twice after blowing a 6-2, 5-2 lead and then falling 4-0 behind in the decider, a late finish under the floodlights leaving him thoroughly spent. Beyond the physical and mental challenge facing the pair, there was also the personal edge that is rarely far from the surface when Zverev and Tsitsipas meet. In their most recent clash, in Cincinnati last autumn, the German accused his rival of cheating, and while relations may have thawed somewhat since then, neither man would relish the prospect of defeat to the other.

In the event, the personal undercurrent was barely detectible, Tsitsipas running out a 6-4, 6-2 winner. At one point in the second set, Zverev went long with a piledriver backhand that he seemed more interested in aiming at Tsitsipas than landing inside the lines, but by then the contest was lost. A subdued start and some untimely double faults had something to do with that, but mostly it was down to Tsitsipas, whose greater energy and tactical clarity reaped dividends. The Greek was the steadier of the two off the ground, made adroit use of drop shots and low, mid-court slices to pull Zverev forward, and produced an array of fine passing shots to thwart him at the net. In short, he dug deep.

“I had to put my soul out there, and I demanded from myself to make it physical, as surprising as this may sound, after a very physical battle last night,” said Tsitsipas. “I knew that my body may not respond the same way that I wanted to, but I had certain demands and I kind of stick to those demands and made them happen, as surreal as it may sound.”

Zverev recovered an early break with a scorching backhand winner, but his discomfort was clear as he struggled on serve and racked up mistakes. An error-strewn passage of play cost him a second break in the sixth game, from which Tsitsipas was always in control.

“I was quite limited in what I did today,” said Zverev. “In the match yesterday [towards] the end I was struggling a little bit with my serve because of my leg. But at the end, I was limited a little bit today. Yesterday obviously took a lot out of me. I think the issue with my leg didn’t help.  

“But Stefanos played 10 times better than me, so he deserved to win at the end of the day. Nothing more to say. I wish him good luck in the final.”

There, Tsitsipas will face Davidovich Fokina after the Spanish world No 46, who battled through in three sets against Taylor Fritz on Friday, survived another protracted contest to prevail 6-4, 6-7 (2-7), 6-3 against Grigor Dimitrov.

At 30, Dimitrov was the oldest of the four semi-finalists, and after battling all the way to a third-set tiebreak to get past 11th seed Hubert Hurkacz the previous day, the Bulgarian quickly found himself with his back to the wall once again as Davidovich Fokina powered through the opening set without facing a break point. True to the prevailing spirit of the afternoon, however, Dimitrov rallied magnificently, shrugging off the disappointment of losing an early second-set lead to take full advantage when the younger man faltered with the finishing line in sight. 

Leading 5-3 in the second set, and with a place in his first ATP final tantalisingly close, Davidovich Fokina netted a backhand into the open court that would have taken him within two points of victory. Then, as he served for the match in the following game, the 22-year-old made a sequence of errors from the baseline. Now Dimitrov was re-energised, racing through the subsequent tiebreak to level the contest before claiming an early break in the decider. Davidovich Fokina was confronted with a simple choice: dig deep, or bid farewell to an unforgettable week. He chose the former.

“When I was 2-0 down and he had breakpoints too, I pushed myself to the limit,” said Davidovich Fokina, who has so impressively followed up his win over Novak Djokovic earlier in the week. “I was tired and he was playing very good, me not so good in the beginning of the third set. But I managed to run [down] every ball, to put the ball in. You know, I just did it and I’m glad that I pushed myself.”

It was that kind of day.

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You can hit forehands and backhands all day long, sweat blood in the gym and on the track, but even the most meticulous dress rehearsal cannot fully prepare a player for the physical and mental demands of opening night. Match fitness, making the right decisions in pressure situations, reading an opponent and knowing when to bide your time, when to push harder – these are qualities forged only in the heat of competition.

Not even Djokovic is above these immutable truths and, 47 days after he last struck a tennis ball in anger, the world No 1 struggled, fretted and fought before fading dramatically down the home straight as he was beaten 6-3, 6-7 (5-7), 6-1 by Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain at the Monte Carlo Masters. 

It was a committed and at times inspired performance by the 46th-ranked Davidovich Fokina, whose only previous win over a top-10 player came on the same court against Matteo Berrettini last year, when the 22-year-old went on to reach the last eight. But if the outcome was understandable, given that this was only Djokovic’s fourth match of the season, the manner in which the top-ranked Serbian fell away in the decider still came as a shock.

“I didn’t like the way I felt physically in the third,” said Djokovic, whose refusal to take a Covid vaccine has so limited his activity. “I just ran out of gas completely. Just couldn’t really stay in the rally with him. I mean, if you can’t stay in the rally, not feeling your legs on the clay, it’s mission impossible.  

“I don’t like that, that kind of feeling I experienced in the third, but, you know, I’m going to look with my team into reasons why that was the case and go back to the drawing board and hopefully next week will be better.”

Those reasons should not be hard to come by. Djokovic’s ability to outlast and endure has been proven time and again over the past decade, and more matches will no doubt quickly bring more stamina. Performances like this will not make those matches any easier to come by, however, and while Djokovic rightly pointed out that he is rarely at his best early in the clay-court swing, he will be eager to avoid any repeat at next week’s Serbia Open, where Andrey Rublev is the only other top-10 player on the entry list.

Here, Djokovic looked out of touch from the outset, quickly racking up mistakes as Davidovich Fokina, hammering forehands and patrolling the baseline with muscular athleticism, claimed three breaks to take the first set. When the Spaniard battled his way through a 15-minute service game to consolidate an early break in the second, the outcome began to assume an air of inevitability. But Djokovic has lost none of his famed stubbornness, and the setback seemed only to galvanise him. He responded by reeling off 10 points in succession and, despite failing to serve out the set at 5-4 amid more error-strewn play, the Serb capped a fine transition from defence to attack with a forehand winner to seal the tiebreak.

Now Djokovic eyed the crowd intently, holding a finger to his ear and nodding in “I-told-you-so” fashion before emitting a triumphant bellow. Similar scenes have been played out countless times down the years, and we know how the story usually ends. But Davidovich Fokina evidently hadn’t been paying attention, and when Djokovic returned from a change of attire only to blow a 40-15 lead on his serve amid much self-castigation, the Spaniard set about fashioning his own denouement.

“[When] I lost the second set, I went to the bathroom to reset my mind and just play, from the beginning of the third set, harder,” said Davidovich Fokina, who showed no compunction about hurling himself across the clay in pursuit of victory, and was rewarded for his troubles with a bloodied hand that required treatment midway through the second set. 

“I fell down many times, but I just wanted to be focused for the next point. I didn’t care if I was bleeding or hurting my hip, [it] doesn’t matter. I was playing against the No 1. 

“I knew Nole didn’t have the confidence because he didn’t play a lot this season. I had my chances in the beginning of the match and I took them. When he won the second set it was tough mentally, but I work hard to be focused. I had to be prepared for the war.”

And so Djokovic moves on from Monte Carlo, where he lives and trains, to the equally familiar environs of his native Belgrade. There will be no temptation to hit the panic button just yet – lest we forget, he was beaten early in Monte Carlo last year by Britain’s Dan Evans, yet still went on to claim the spoils at Roland Garros – but he will certainly be looking for a marked improvement. 

“I was hanging on the ropes the entire match,” said Djokovic, who was broken nine times and accumulated 51 unforced errors in total. “I was really chasing the result constantly. 

“He could have won this match in straight sets, and I just kind of fought my way through to the third, but then I just, physically, completely collapsed. I couldn’t move any more.”

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