Despite the hurt, Roland Garros could yet be scene of Djokovic’s ultimate achievement

The greatest evidence of Novak Djokovic’s quest for his elusive French Open title consuming all other stories lies in the fact that its most significant consequence has barely merited a mention.

If the world number one defeats Andy Murray on Sunday, he will pull off the ultimate achievement in tennis and something that no man to ever inhabit planet earth has ever accomplished in the history of men’s tennis: he will hold all four slams across three surfaces simultaneously. When Rod Laver won his famous pair of Grand Slams in 1962 and 1969, three of the four slams took place on grass.

As usual, plenty of Djokovic’s followers view this as proof of the universal lack of appreciation for the legendary palmares Djokovic continues to acquire. It’s another example, they say, of the media conspiring against him out of respect to the achievements of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

In reality, it’s simply a reminder of just how heavily this attempt to finally complete his set of slams weighs on him and his career. Djokovic’s victory over Dominic Thiem on Wednesday marked his eighth career semi-final at Roland Garros. By comparison, Rafael Nadal has reached nine semi-finals in his career. The manner in which their paths have dramatically diverged past this stage of the tournament is astounding.

The French Open has been the bogey tournament to end all bogey tournaments for Djokovic, and no player in the history of tennis has ever produced such performances at one major event yet failed to capture its greatest honour. Some of the moments Djokovic has lived in his failures to triumph in Paris have had the force to destroy souls. Few meltdown in tennis have ever been as loud, as mortifying and as costly as the fateful moment Djokovic rounded on Nadal at *4-3 in the 5th set of their 2013 semi-final.

At deuce, Djokovic could taste the texture of his greatest victory as he stood six points from the final. He snapped a backhand down the line, then leaned into a crosscourt forehand. The Spaniard’s lobbed response was so weak that Rafael Nadal did what Rafael Nadal never does and he gave up on the point. It was an unmissable smash for Djokovic, and he didn’t miss it. But as Djokovic landed after jumping into the smash and, he stumbled, he collapsed into the net before the ball bounced a second time and all hope collapsed with him.

This could have been the moment that Djokovic subconsciously resigned himself to never triumphing in Paris. But not even that moment defined Djokovic’s Roland Garros run. He recovered and returned to the final against Nadal the very next year. Thus, his relationship with the tournament is best described in terms of the resilience he has taken with him to constantly recover after these setbacks. The French Open has hosted his greatest disappointments, yet he has never mentally succumbed to them. He has returned year after year to the deeper stages, and his failure to win is, for the most part, a measure of Nadal’s dominance at the tournament and two stratospheric performances from a pair of Swiss players.

After finally losing to someone other than Nadal or Federer in last year’s final, Djokovic’s return to the clay courts this year highlighted the heightened tension that every failed Roland Garros assault brings. Across the three clay ATP Masters 1000 tournaments and certain early rounds in Paris, he has raged and appeared in a state of constant agitation. Djokovic resentfully tossed his racquet around and roared in streams of Serbian words so filthy that even football hooligans would cower. He has flirted with the possibility of being out and disqualified from matches over the past few weeks - first when his racquet bounced up into the crowd and barely missed a spectator in Rome, and then when a linesman pulled off his best matrix move as the Djokovic racquet inadvertently flew towards his face.

Yet one match away from returning to the stage of last year’s crushing defeat to Wawrinka, Djokovic didn’t whimper or cower. Against Thiem and before a raucous crowd on Court Lenglen, the crackling fire in the belly of the world number one projected the loudest noise of all. For two hours, he played methodical, purposeful tennis and he exhibited the requisite clarity to expertly expose the acres space the Austrian left every time he sauntered far back behind the baseline.

But when Thiem’s explosive strokes finally began to detonate inside the lines, his heart followed. The Serb pumped his fist, roared to the crowd, and looked more positively pumped up than at any point in the clay season. After the negativity and fearful handling of much of his clay season, as he rounded on yet another opportunity to take his elusive title, he was buoyed into action.

Are any of Djokovic’s performances before the final significant? Not even Djokovic knows. If the Serb competes against Murray to a measure of the level he exhibited across his first four impossibly dominant months of the year, he will win. This is fact. Djokovic is that dominant and the distance between Djokovic and the world number two are as large as the numerical difference of their ranking points – with Djokovic’s ranking points at one point two times greater than the Scot’s.

Murray should take confidence from his victory over Djokovic in Rome. Court positioning has become the single most important facet for any player hoping to outplay Djokovic, and Rome stood as a reminder that he has the ability and the confidence to step up to the baseline and refuse to relinquish it.

But neither man had any delusions about the insignificance of their result in Italy after Djokovic was forced to play deep into the night before the final against a transcendent Kei Nishikori, while Murray wrapped up his easy route to the final with a victory over a lucky loser in Lucas Pouille who was entirely out of his depth. Djokovic had little to give in their Rome final, and Murray was strong and professional enough to punish him for it.

The biggest question is just how much will yet another attempt to finally clear this hurdle affect Djokovic. The Serb will surely not present the single-minded composure of his semi-final, and the occasion will pierce unavoidable chinks in his usually flawless, impenetrable armour.

But Djokovic has waited a long time for this moment, and after enduring Federer rising to the occasion in 2011, the violent destruction of Wawrinka last year and the supremacy of Nadal for the rest of past decade, Djokovic must know that this is an opportunity he cannot afford to miss. One would assume that what has enabled him to constantly dust off the disappointment and return to the later stages in Paris every year is the expectation that he will eventually finish first.

Sunday appears to be a very logical moment to finally do so.