ANALYSIS: Assessing Novak Djokovic's season after Olympic Games heroics cancel out poor start

Novak Djokovic recently won the Paris Olympics, so how does his 2024 season look now? Let's assess.

A lot has been written in recent years about Novak Djokovic and his impending demise. There was almost a sense of wanting it to happen. He's not the most popular tennis player out there—he never was—but the number of people seemingly ready to cheer on his demise was truly staggering.

For a while this year, it seemed like things were heading in that direction, but is that the case right now? It's tricky to tell, but these upcoming weeks will certainly provide an answer to that question. To compare properly, we must first remind ourselves of what happened last year.

Djokovic had a fantastic 2023 campaign, showing no signs of slowing down. He started the year with a title run in Adelaide and then followed it up by winning the Australian Open. A truly remarkable January where he went 12-0, and nobody was surprised. He's dominated that part of the season for so many years that most people accept he will do it again.

He would struggle after that, failing to make a final for a while. He didn't play that much, but it wasn't anything special when he did. Rumours started swirling, but they were firmly squashed at Roland Garros, where Djokovic bested a cramping Carlos Alcaraz in the semi-final and Casper Ruud in the final to make it 2/2 at Grand Slams. Wimbledon was another strong run, and when he won the opening set against Alcaraz in the final 6-1, it seemed like we were heading to a 3/3 mark at Grand Slams.

It wouldn't come to that, as Carlos Alcaraz produced a sensational fightback to engineer a surprise win. As upsetting as it was, it didn't really deter Djokovic in any meaningful way. He found his best tennis in the US again, winning the Cincinnati Masters by beating Carlos Alcaraz and then the US Open by beating Daniil Medvedev.

Two more trophies came until the end of the year: the Paris Masters and the ATP Finals. To summarise, 2023 was a ridiculous campaign. It was utter dominance, and he looked as good as he ever looked. So what happened this year?

Well, let's just say that he's up to 7 losses already, compared to 8 in total last year. That in itself shows that he's not had a similarly good year, but we're going to break it down further.

The Australian Open campaign was going smoothly until he ran into Jannik Sinner in the semi-final. The Italian already gave him some trouble late last year, but this time around, he completely outplayed him. It wasn't even that close, and for the first time in years, Djokovic looked kind of old. Sinner would go on to win the trophy, and people wondered how Djokovic would respond. Generally, in his career, failures like this one were followed by a really dominant return to the sport.

His next event was the Indian Wells Masters, and he lost to Luca Nardi there. Then he lost to Casper Ruud at the Monte-Carlo Masters, and people started to wonder whether Djokovic was falling off. Has age finally caught up to him? Have the rivals become too strong for him?

For quite some time, the questions were valid. Not only were his results a far cry from last year, but he wasn't passing the eye test either. He simply wasn't playing well, and he didn't seem confident in his game either. There was a lot of doubt in his voice, but he tried to portray a stoic image of a player who still believed in himself. He likely did, but it would be foolish to think that the bad run didn't impact him in one way or another.

The French Open would prove a rather troublesome event for Djokovic. He wasn't playing that well to begin with and then also injured his knee in the fourth round. Djokovic would actually pull out due to a torn meniscus and undergo surgery the day after. Things went from bad to worse because nobody really knew what was going to happen. It's not the worst knee injury, but it cost him Roland Garros and put Wimbledon in serious risk.

At his time last year, Djokovic was 2/2 at Grand Slams, and this year, he was 0/2 likely to be 0/3. That zero would eventually happen because he would get beaten by Carlos Alcaraz in the Wimbledon final. The sheer fact that he made that final so close to his surgery is basically a miracle, and it foreshadowed what would happen in a few weeks. Djokovic's game improved as the season went on because he played far better during the summer than in the previous weeks. He was trending upward, but there was still a lot of scepticism about whether he could truly return to where he was.

Enter the Paris Olympics. The final piece of the puzzle, as many would call it. Novak Djokovic never won the gold medal at the Olympics, and in his own words, it was his biggest regret for the longest time. It was a dream of his since childhood, and being able to win as much as he did but never getting his hand on the gold felt like a massive failure to him. It's even worse if you remember how patriotic Djokovic is and how much playing for his country means to him.

Winning the Olympics has been the goal for this season. He spoke often about how the Olympics are above everything for him this year, but it was a very tough undertaking. Carlos Alcaraz was the favourite, and he was by far the best player in the past two months. He had just beaten Djokovic in the Wimbledon final and also won Roland Garros, so many basically already gave him the gold.

Djokovic had other plans, though. He made the final against Alcaraz and then outplayed him. It wasn't the cleanest match, and he was under tremendous pressure for a good part of the first set, but he navigated it spectacularly to win the trophy. The emotional release was huge for Djokovic, and he was the happiest we've seen him in a very long time.

So far this year, the Olympics are the only event he's won, and overall, the 2024 campaign pales compared to last year. So what does that mean? Quite frankly, it doesn't mean anything because the most significant things about this year prove that Djokovic is not done, which is the ultimate question. First of all, he showed that his body is still in tremendous shape as he recovered in record time from a meniscus injury.

He managed to play superb tennis after that return, and there is nothing that might make us think that Djokovic can't play for 2-3 more years. Second of all, he won the Olympics, beating the best player in the world relatively comfortably in the final. That's proof that he's still one of the best players in the world, capable of producing a sensational run when he puts his mind to it. Those two takeaways show us that Djokovic is still there.

The struggle this year was real and concerning, but he overcame it. Ultimately, you get judged not by how many times you fall but by how many times you get up, and he fell hard earlier this year. But he also got up and shined brightly once more, which is very impressive.

The barometer for next year will largely depend on how he finishes this year. He'll be in the mix for the US Open and the many events that follow later this year, so if he finishes strongly with a couple of trophies, everybody will forget about earlier this year.

If he doesn't and returns to the struggles of earlier this year, then the conversation will resurface. What's clear is that Djokovic doesn't have a huge gap between himself and the rest anymore, but his best tennis is still above the rest, which is amazing in itself.

He hasn't won as many trophies this year and won't match the output from last year. He hasn't won as many Grand Slams this year, but winning the gold medal makes everything right. It's the one trophy he was missing and many held against him. Winning it this year and in the manner in which he did it removed all of those doubts and criticisms. It all but crowned him as the greatest tennis player of all time.

Missing out on a couple of trophies or one or two Grand Slams shouldn't be a huge ideal for Djokovic. He's still in contention to dethrone Jimmy Connors as the player with the most trophies ever in the Open Era, and he's still the leader in the Grand Slam tally with 24. History has been made, but it's just a matter of whether he'll make even more history in the coming years. Time will tell.