A second arrives almost each time a youthful participant seizes the benefit over Novak Djokovic, with designs of toppling him from his perch on the prime of tennis.

It doesn’t matter how deep a gap Djokovic has dug for himself, or how properly the whippersnapper on the opposite facet of the web is perhaps enjoying.

Maybe Djokovic is down by two units, as he was towards Stefanos Tsitsipas within the French Open last two years in the past and towards Jannik Sinner within the quarterfinals at Wimbledon final 12 months. Perhaps Djokovic is hobbling across the court docket with an damage after letting his opponent draw even, as he was after 4 units towards Taylor Fritz on the Australian Open in 2021, when he had torn an stomach muscle and coughed up a two-set lead.

Then the opposite man begins to assume he may truly be on the verge of one thing grand, simply as Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish sensation, may do on Friday on the French Open in his semifinal showdown with Djokovic, a match the sport has been yearning for for the reason that spring of 2022.

The racket turns into a bit heavier, the elbow a bit tighter, as Djokovic’s foes begin to think about pulling off the win. After all these years, all these matches within the deep finish of a Grand Slam match, Djokovic, 36, can spot it from a mile away.

He doesn’t must. Djokovic, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, is inside 80 toes, and he believes in his coronary heart that every part is about to go his method.

It occurred once more on Tuesday after greater than two hours of battle towards Karen Khachanov within the quarterfinals. Khachanov, the massive, burly Russian with a hammer-like serve and forehand and almost a decade much less mileage on his legs, had taken the primary set and compelled a tiebreaker within the second. He had his opening.

Or not. An ideal, 7-0 tiebreaker drew Djokovic even. A break of serve within the first recreation of the subsequent set put him forward. Khachanov was completed.

“The energy of the court shifted to my side,” Djokovic mentioned after dispatching Khachanov.

But when Djokovic faces Alcaraz, who has taken the No. 1 rating from him twice prior to now 9 months, will probably be a check towards youth not like something Djokovic has confronted earlier than. The two have performed solely as soon as, in May 2022, in Madrid; Djokovic and Alcaraz stored lacking one another for one purpose or one other within the 13 months since.

“A complete player,” Lorenzo Musetti, 21, of Italy, an Alcaraz sufferer this week within the fourth spherical, mentioned of the participant he got here to know on Europe’s junior circuit.

Singular moments when one era takes over from one other can really feel just like the shifting of tectonic plates. Every so usually, males’s tennis delivers a torch-passing match: Pete Sampras tearing by way of John McEnroe on the 1990 U.S. Open; Roger Federer beating Sampras on Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2001. Is one other one at hand?

Daniil Medvedev, the world’s second-ranked participant, and the one participant presently in his 20s to beat Djokovic in a Grand Slam last, mentioned not way back that it’s almost not possible to beat Djokovic till you will have first misplaced to him a number of occasions. Opponents must get used to his shot patterns and his relentless skill to make them hit another ball after they assume they’ve ended the purpose.

Not so for Alcaraz. Alcaraz beat Djokovic of their lone assembly, in a deciding-set tiebreaker no much less (albeit in a best-of-three-sets match). So far Alcaraz has exhibited not one of the fragility displayed towards Djokovic in huge moments by his contemporaries, and even the gamers just a few years older than he’s who had been purported to be the subsequent era of tennis stars.

“I really want to play that match,” Alcaraz mentioned late Tuesday after he blasted by way of Tsitsipas within the quarterfinals to lock within the showdown with Djokovic. “I’m going to enjoy it.”

Maybe.

One of the age-old adages about sports activities normally and tennis particularly is that by the point athletes have gained the knowledge and expertise essential to actually crack their sport’s code, their our bodies have betrayed them. Djokovic has been giving this concept a run for its cash.

That just isn’t unintentional. He nearly by no means drinks alcohol. He tries to sleep eight and a half hours an evening, with a deal with his prime R.E.M. sleep hours. His postmatch health club and stretching routine typically appears to be like as arduous as a traditional individual’s exercise.

It can also be troublesome to argue that there’s a sounder, extra developed mind in tennis. Djokovic way back redrew the angles of the sport, discovering new photographs to hit and new methods to win matches and titles, turning into the world’s top-ranked participant in an period when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray had been making that as arduous because it had ever been. These days, he modifies the tempo and rhythm of factors with ease, like a baseball pitcher mixing in fastballs, curveballs, sinkers and changeups in each at-bat. And then he makes use of a serve-and-volley like a participant from the Eighties, simply to ensure everybody is aware of he can try this, too.

He has spent years buying and selling notes on psychological fortitude with celebrity athletes in tennis and different sports activities — Boris Becker, Kobe Bryant, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to call just a few. He meditates. He is aware of methods to focus when he wants to love nobody else. He has performed 5 tiebreakers on this match with out making an unforced error.

Approaching his forty fifth Grand Slam semifinal, Djokovic has grow to be a grasp of the five-set format, its nearly inevitable emotional dips and swings. He appears to spend the primary set gathering details about his opponent. If he loses that set, as he did within the final two Wimbledon finals, and even the subsequent one, no huge deal. There’s nonetheless loads of time.

“He’s always there, you know, he’s always pushing,” Khachanov mentioned. “He always tries to find a way.”

Whether that can work towards Alcaraz is Friday’s nice thriller. Alcaraz has up to now proven so most of the advantages of youth — velocity, energy, energy, the optimism of a participant who has scarcely any unhealthy days — and so few of the pitfalls. He performs with a type of limitless pleasure and freedom that different gamers battle to understand, in the identical method they battle to deal with the rate of his forehand and his unmatched improvisational shotmaking.

Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach, mentioned he has at all times wished to surge a step forward. When he was enjoying Futures tournaments, in the game’s third tier, he believed he was prepared for Challengers, the second tier; when he was enjoying Challengers, he believed he was prepared for the principle tour.

“He is able to make any shots on the court,” Ferrero mentioned. “If you ask him to go to the net in a match point, he is able to do it. Or if I ask to return and go to the net, he is able to do it and make the drop shot.”

He can play lengthy factors or brief ones. Whatever the second requires.

After Tuesday evening, Tsitsipas had misplaced to each Djokovic and Alcaraz on the court docket the place the two will face off Friday. Like everybody else, Tsitsipas mentioned he had sized up the match as a showdown between the sport’s most superior mind, a participant who seeks to maneuver his opponent and management each shot, and the sport’s purest and quickest of skills.

“One has experience, the other one has legs and moves like Speedy Gonzales,” Tsitsipas mentioned. “One can hit huge, super big shots; and the other one prefers precision, to apply pressure and make his opponent move as much as possible.”

Who will win?

“I root for the kids,” Tsitsipas mentioned.

Against Djokovic, they want all the assistance they will get.