#djokoraz

[alacants]

Ok you might not be interested in this but you seem to be the tennisblr discourse person and your takes are so great so feel free not to answer haha - but I feel like this fandom collectively is sleeping on the potential of Novak/Carlos? Something about this Fedal baby appearing when all Novak's real rivals are gone who is openly affectionate with Nole like neither of them were. & the pain of Carlos losing matches he's expected to win very publicly to him all the time & getting criticised for falling for Novak's "mind games" (lol) but still not making any effort to stay away from him. And all the titan/titanito stuff IDK it compels me

kdlfjakldjf idk if i would describe my niche in the ecosystem in such maximal terms but. flattery will get you everywhere.

most importantly, you are RIGHT. there is massive potential here, in both their on-court history and their off-court dynamic. in fact there's so much material that i'm struggling to shape my thoughts into a coherent answer SORRY IN ADVANCE. ← need to stop acting like this isn't the norm.

ok first of all. rpf aside, this rivalry is fascinating because carlos alcaraz is doing more than anyone else around to validate novak's current day stature as a tennis player. and novak's at the stage of his career where you start to think about your legacy not just in the wider world but within tennis—how will you be remembered and talked about by those who inherit the sport from you. 

roger federer is the very, very obvious measuring stick. take this video (obligatory zverev & kyrgios warning). in a vacuum you'd never know who barely played half these guys versus who was out there making mincemeat of them on the regular while also holding every record known to man. such minced meat that those achievements aren't necessarily seen as a success for you so much as a referendum on them. 

and then along comes carlos alcaraz. and for reasons fair or unfair, tennis fans are so hungry for his arrival. they want to a new star, they want to see him dominate, and they want it to look exciting. and some tennis fans, in particular, would love to see novak djokovic get washed. 

which at first is what looks like is gonna happen. carlos wins his first wimbledon final at novak's expense. the emperor's been toppled, ding dong the witch is dead—and then cincinnati. then wimbledon again, and not even close, he's really for real dead, this time it's gonna take—and then the olympics. which is the first major final loss carlos has ever experienced, tears and all. and then the australian open, where carlos has set his sights loudly and uncompromisingly on the title and the career slam and the record. only guess what. not yet. 

and now novak is indisputably part of carlos' narrative, an active agent in a living breathing rivalry with a flesh-and-blood player instead of ghosts and record books. everyone says carlos alcaraz is the real thing. and that means that so, still, is novak. 

(meanwhile, in the space of 12 months jannik sinner happened. but i can't get into that or this post will REALLY get out of control.)

that's on court. where carlos plays not like rafa but like roger, and there's no way novak doesn't see that. ("spanish never die" notwithstanding.) off court, it's like falling into a mirrorverse. carlos isn't just willing to share the spotlight he's eager to have company. he is singlehandedly trying to yank the player he's identified as his closest peer up there on the same level with him well before anyone else gets it. and he thinks novak is one of the greats.

like yeah man WHAT IF time-traveling roger federer actually loved you. here's round two with a certified tennis genius who doesn't resent you and everything you represent and does laugh at your jokes and respect your achievements and speak in glowing terms about how you play tennis. it's gotta feel good, right?

and yet. not good enough to stop novak from doing what he has to do to win.

there's something similar yet very finely distinct about novak and carlos as top players and people persons. i'm boiling it down to, for novak it's being friends won't stop my talent and for carlos it's my talent shouldn't stop us from being friends. (i would say that's also roger coded, except imo roger's initial take, in the mid-00s, was that his talent very well MIGHT stop you from being friends and that's okay, he doesn't hold it against you. <3) in both cases, the feelings are genuine, and so is the confidence. 

novak's always wanted to be liked. he's the funny guy, he wants to make people laugh, he wants to be friends, but he is absolutely and totally unwilling to compromise the things that might make it easier to keep those friends. given a choice, he will always choose being the best. and if someone, or someones—especially someones—doesn't like him, well. for better or worse, he's learned to feed on it. this is no different. friendship and respect and affection and praise are not going to stop novak from using every tool at his disposal to win. every bit of understanding he's gained about his opponent as a person and a player. 

(my take on this is not actually negative by the way. if you're a professional athlete it's your responsibility to use those tools and to play the person as well as the player. also coming to the mind games sport and complaining about the mind games is like going to the circus and complaining about the clowns.)

i think that ao qf moment was so telling—the moment carlos was faux-limping and looking over at novak's bench with this sort of injured confusion like, why are you doing this to me. betrayed dog vibes to the max. the comments afterward as well. the tear was very real, but the reaction says a lot. like welcome to the novak djokovic experience kid! bff phrased it as "the phenomenon of accepting novak djokovic's overtures of friendship and inadvertently letting him into your psyche just enough for him to fuck with you the next time you play. he should talk to rafa about it." this isn't the only interpretation, but it sure is a tasty one.

and yet. carlos is demonstrably a lover not a hater. i would bet anything that—especially with the injury details out there—it's not going to change anything even if, like, IT SHOULD. there is this bit in anon's fic one is silver and the other gold, which is one of my favorite carlos & novak dynamics: Carlos wants to hate him. It would be easier; everything would be easier if he could hate all the people he's supposed to, for "proper competitive mindset" or whatever. But as usual, he just doesn't have it in him.

idk i think there is a ton of fascinating stuff to dig into wrt regret and cycles and second chances and novak's impending mortality and the nature of genius. i do think it's ultimately doomed but it's still really interesting. 

(or alternatively i mean. maybe the impending mortality DOES make the difference. maybe novak does get out of the time loop! like, i am most personally compelled by all of the above with the invisible presence of andy murray haunting the narrative BUT there is a pretty funny romcom alternative with novak's friend (!!!) and coach andy murray immediately clocking what's up and being like nole please don't get your heart broken by a twenty-one year old, which, HEY novak's been around the block a few times he's not gonna do something stupid… <- he is absolutely gonna do something stupid.)

[alacants]

did someone say djokoraz because these (probably meant as insults but) tweets i saw the other day made me think about some things https://x.com/prophetspoison/status/1886782762226516025 https://x.com/Truth_Police100/status/1886750423794569667

SCREAM yeah gonna take these exactly at face value (which i'm sure the ops would love 😘). carlitos watch out he's toying with your heart!!!!

[alacants]

This discussion is great and I need five fics on AO3 by Monday, to throw in my two cents I think it's so funny how Nole and Carlos are SO physically affectionate with each other. it's somewhere between genuinely cute and a constant alpha male standoff (and does Carlos even realise he's participating lol?) meanwhile Jannik is not having any of that

HAHA WAIT omg this is the cat vs rabbit paradox - cats and rabbits get along so well because cats display dominance by grooming/cuddles and rabbits display dominance by demanding to be groomed/cuddled. anyway carlos is the rabbit.

[alacants]

Recent nole/carlos thoughts making me think of omega Carlos. Sorry to make it omegaverse but love the idea of the most tempting sweetest omega on tour versus unphased beta Nole

minutes after i made that post about rabbitlike assertions of dominance i found myself staring at it like wait. this is just omega carlos. do not post that. 

SO thanks for posting it for me. this does tie in neatly with 1) beta-who-became-an-alpha novak 2) australian open qf. namely that although novak is now for all intents and purposes an alpha he doesn't respond to omegas the way one would expect an alpha to. the way carlos is very used to them responding, lol. mind game without even trying!

[alacants]

author of butterfly here: i am very flattered you liked it so much! life is too busy to watch much tennis at the moment but djokoraz regency au has captivated me w/ its ridiculousness.

obviously charly is sad because jannik just gave in to heterosexuality and got engaged, novak just came back from a long trip abroad for ~mysterious reasons~ and is now doing things like gatecrashing balls at roger's house, and holger is, well, colin bridgerton (he's always telling charly how great it is that they're both still single and trying to persuade him to tour india together) and serena is the queen of england. anyway no promises but i might write it 😜 or some canon era let's see

omg HI????? HELLO HUGE FAN THIS IS VERY EXCITING.

wait. holy shit. ok first of all i am looking at my bookmarks and i think i was actually referring to chrysalis (there was a name change at some point, right?) and second. this is how i discovered there's a sequel. could have sworn i was subscribed to the series but i guess not, this is karma for never leaving a comment. —ok started to read got to jannik's dream sequence and lfjdalf i have to answer this ask first or i will FULLY lose the plot and forget who novak djokovic is. haha just kidding i wrote that and then immediately read the whole thing, past me was right this IS one of my favorites, even more so than its predecessor. jesus christ.

sorry to liveblog my journey of discovery. for everyone else this is the series, although you've probably read it already: un bel dì, vedremo

ok back on track. really shot myself in the foot there. YO if you decided to actually run with this concept i would simply expire?? i can immediately see gatecrashing balls at roger's like i am watching in 4K HD, my god. after all what is a regency au but a mile-long record of minute yet fraught conflicts shadowing every single present interaction, and what are the big four if not…

(…keep trying to comment on other aspects of this concept—queen serena!!!! carlos and holger racing their rickety little gigs through hyde park!!—but mysteriously all efforts keeps turning into the elaborate and tortured backstory for carlos' guardian that popped into my head .01 seconds after typing the words "regency au." well. at least i know how to stay on brand.)

having said all that i am ngl, based on the mildly psychotic eroticism of being sports rivals etc i would LOVE to read your take on canonverse djokoraz. possibly even more than an au. but really wherever the keyboard takes youuuuu, i am LISTENING. and hoping that life allows for more tennis soon!!

(eta: also, goes without saying but whenever part 3 of the sincaraz series drops i am in the front fucking row.)

[alacants]

i know you’ve been answering all of these asks abt carlos’ level and what not and i don’t believe he should fire jcf but at minimum hire someone else to get a second opinion. but i do think a lot of the ppl that have been in your asks recently are thinking quite clearly though and i don’t think they’re exactly doom posting lol. points wise carlos usually picks up abt 1500 during clay before rg. and then after that he’s defending 4000 points… defending the channel slam is not an easy task and if he felt pressure against jack draper at iw this will be 10x worse lol. and then after wimby it’s on to the worst part of the season for him except for uso 😭😭😭 2 qf exits at rg & wimby which is “good” would mean a loss of 3200 points for him. and that’s only a net loss of 1700 points if carlos is able to pick up minimum 1500 during clay season. which would put him at abt 5200 points roughly. and he could still be world #3 depending on what others are defending but he would only 100 points above where he was before he won uso in 22… and this is during the bread & butter of his season. and obviously there’s a lot of things that can happen to change this but i don’t exactly think miami qf, barcelona w, madrid w, rome r4, rg qf, queens qf, wimby qf are far fetched results for him. and like i said anything can happen but these results aren’t doom posting to me but for a player at his level they would be alarming. i still feel like carlos is going to win a slam this year so if he did go on a great run and win cincy & uso would it be enough to shrug off the other results in the year?

yes, it's fair to say that my observation re: the two polar extremes is more accurate as a general characterization of the discourse rather than yesterday's two specific asks, which were clearly deeply thought out and well-argued. (even if i still don't agree with every conclusion, haha.)

sorry op i'm about to go off on a major tangent bc i think it's worth clarifying where most of my own takes come from. i was thinking about this more after i logged off last night and look, i'm just always going to be most interested in the macro scale. 6 months or even 18 months doesn't feel like a long time when you're already impatient to know what the player's arc will look like in five years. i have expressed my desire for a crystal ball that will show me the sincaraz dynamic in 2030 roughly one million times lol. this is more of the same. what will we think about carlos alcaraz in 2030? i think we'll see him as a great, but hey, sure, maybe i'm wrong! that just makes it hard to be overly worried about a bad tournament or even a bad season. (and i'm not talking about indian wells 2025 because i do not think that was a bad tournament!)

carlos' career is four years old. that is such a limited set of data. making big projections from it is a doomed enterprise but that's, like, part of sports fandom so go for it. just, when i look at his career i don't see the last two years. i see the next fifteen. and they are one big question mark. (positive.)

so to be perfectly honest you probably won't ever find me saying "this is a disaster he has to course correct right away." it is very likely that i won't conceptualize a disaster as such until it's over. (for that matter there is another assumption underlying this entire discussion, which is: even on the macro scale, i don't think "generational talent fails to maximize their pure potential" is by definition a disaster. but that is definitely a different post lol.)

but even then... well, like i said, for me it's all part of the ride. i am eager, to put it mildly, to see whether the next turn in carlos' narrative is "traumatic breakup" or "dramatic turnaround" or "self-inflicted cliffdive." this is not going to be everyone's take. that's life in the panopticon!

(seriously man four years is nothing. it's just. nothing.)

[alacants]

Ok ok I have a scenario. What happens if carlos alcaraz doesn't happen. Like what would happen if this big blinding ball of energy and sunshine, magic kid and saviour of tennis and whatever just didn't exist. WHAT happens then???

you KNOW i love a good What If!

i mean what carlos did was drive the bleeding edge of the youngest generation right up against the fading end of the big four era. like roger announcing his retirement 4 days after carlitos won his first slam is really something. that i didn't put together until just this minute. (yeah the writing was on the wall but let me have my NARRATIVE.) 

so without carlos, maybe someone's doing that but maybe not. maybe the 90s kids who've been smothered their whole careers get to breathe?? a couple extra years in the sun before the shadow of jannik sinner descends??

i mean OR MAYBE NOT maybe jannik wins that uso qf and goes all the way. (rip casper.) but tbh i think that even if he does it wouldn't be quite as much of a shock to the system—the three years of up and downs from 2019 to 2022 soften the effect into a more natural progression. as opposed to carlos rolling up to win his first 500, masters, and major—TWO majors—all in the same year. this fucking kid lmao. so maybe jannik (or holger! or someone else!) steps in and takes some of carlos' titles, but even if that happens i bet you anything the impact is less paralyzing and the mid-gen still manage to like. rack up some results. believe in themselves. lmao.

and for that matter, that's if we assume jannik develops similarly to irl—i'm sort of intrigued by the counterfactual where jannik doesn't make the jump from piatti quite so quickly. like, he's EOY top 10, he's won some titles, so what if he isn't beating medvedev or tsitsipas or rafole or making it past the early slam rounds, neither is anyone else his age. yet.

having said that i don't think the dissatisfaction jannik felt with where things stood in early 2022 had all that much to do with the presence or absence of carlos in particular (who was also not doing most of those things yet) so for now we'll set that aside. 

anyway so. without carlos, the big rivalry among the younguns is jannik and holger. hahahahaha. and, look, i bet it's not as thorny as it is irl because you don't have the ready-made big three comparisons, holger is probably way better adjusted??? yeah i'm thinking this is who the big winner of a carlosless universe is. holger rune. jannik is (at first) an attainable level of rival and it's not like there's someone else leaving both of them in the dust! meanwhile holger-novak becomes the djokoraz of this universe. and without carlos who was literally born to be a media beloved, holger's the next-best material—like yeah he's ~dramatic and ~controversial but he gives them more than jannik. so what you have is ljfkldajf janholger is the new fedal. no, the new rafole. help i can't stop laughing. i hope jannik is visited by a dream vision of this universe someday.

M E A N W H I L E what is happening at the juan carlos ferrero tennis academy? i mean, it's a normal tennis academy. juanki has a normal job cultivating the youth. it is a little bit crazy to think of the effect that carlos had on juanki's stature and career. like otherwise juanki has the zverev experience and is like oh HELL no—or. hm. actually this is a different and fascinating question, ha, was juanki itching to get back into top-level tennis badly enough that even after getting burned by the zverev experience he would have given it another shot with a non-carlos player. or would it have redirected him definitively back to the academy. 

…….this train of thought is colliding with the discarded counterfactual above + the tidbit that jannik allegedly almost went to rafa nadal academy to produce an outcome that from a pure storytelling perspective i should have anticipated yet somehow didn't see coming. hope you enjoyed witnessing the thought process in real time.

RIGHT so what happens if carlos alcaraz doesn't exist is: juanki coaches jannik to a gripping career rivalry with holger rune. TA DA.

/user alacants out

[alacants]

djokoraz quarterfinal you say 👀

[alacants]

not tennis related but do you have cats (or any other pets)? if so how many? and what are their names? :) also good luck staying up and hopefully u can sleep soon 🫡 i've been going through it too but luckily i have nothing else for the day so i can rest

WAH THANK YOU GREAT ASK YES I DO. her name is mercedes but mostly i just call her kitty. here she is 1. attentively watching djokoraz qf 2. judging ruud v. munar 3. obstructing an important transit artery 4. helping me pack.

[alacants]

What have been your like. Top 3 matches of the year so far

GREAT QUESTION that is really going to highlight the goldfish nature of my memory... ok no i am going to fight recency bias by skimming my lb tag.

djokoraz ao qf. (sorry to my mutuals who were unspeakably traumatized.) was it the best tennis i saw played all year? definitely not. but my GOD it was a thriller.

aryna/madi ao final. i am not gonna lie. i was sleeping on madi keys before this run, in fact i was sleeping on madi keys DURING much of this run lmao. so this was a real eye-opener for me personally. just... commanding at every level.

ffffff i am so torn on this one but i think i'm gonna give monfils/fritz the third spot over monfils/dimitrov iw just because 38 year old gael monfils walking the world no 4 on a leash in that tiebreak was Something to behold.

honorary mentions: townkova/hsiehpenko ao final, adm/andrey doha final, munar-ruud ao r1 (DON'T @ ME IT WAS GREAT), svitolina/paolini ao r3, the first set of carlos/hubi rotterdam final lol.

[alacants]

djokoraz anon your ideas are very compelling to me, so compelling that i can barely manage to get MY thoughts in order. much to consider!!!!

[alacants]

rip djokoraz quarterfinal 😔

djokoraz quarterfinal you say 👀