Djokovic — hoisting and embracing his children, who have been with him all week — was on top of tennis once more.
“In my mind, I always see myself as the best player in the world,” he said.
He was this week, but this is tennis.
In fairness to the sport, it’s been a weird year. Coronavirus outbreaks. Changing vaccination requirements. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ill-timed injures at the top of the sport. And yet, no one, not even the people who run tennis — and there are a lot of them, in seven different ruling organizations — would ever suggest that the sport makes it easy on fans.
While 2022 may have been especially messy, tennis is the rare sport that seems to encourage the mess. Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece won the most matches among the top players, but just one significant tournament, making him either a major disappointment or a rising force, or both, depending on the week or the month, or the prism that he or anyone else uses to measure the season.
Prefer a more subjective measure? Nick Kyrgios, the temperamental and combative Australian, a master showman and “tennis genius” according to Djokovic’s coach, is the reigning crowd favorite, especially with the younger generation. He packs stadiums everywhere, for singles and doubles, but hates to travel and plays a limited schedule. He is also facing a domestic violence charge in Australia in relation to a fight with an ex-girlfriend last year.
“It’s like you have this book and everybody is writing different chapters,” said Andrea Gaudenzi, the chairman of the ATP and a former player. “And you can only find those chapters in different bookstores, and you’ve got to figure out the story.”
The danger for professional tennis as the world has known it for a half-century is that within confusion there is an opportunity for disruption, and those forces are lurking. Saudi Arabia, which made a mess of men’s golf this year, buying players away from the PGA Tour to create LIV Golf, has begun to dip its toe into tennis. Several top young players — including Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev of Russia, Alexander Zverev of Germany, Kyrgios and Dominic Thiem of Austria — will play in an exhibition in Saudi Arabia in December, likely earning hefty fees just to show up. Stay tuned in 2023.