Record rewritten on hard courts, with tape on the back
Novak Djokovic walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium in all-black—Lacoste kit, ASICS shoes, the full “Darth Vader” look—and walked out with another slice of tennis history. He beat Britain’s Cameron Norrie 6-4, 6-7, 6-2, 6-3 in the US Open third round to claim his 192nd hard-court Grand Slam victory, nudging past Roger Federer for the most in men’s majors on the surface. It was gritty and imperfect, but it was decisive—very much Djokovic at 38.
The numbers matter, but the manner lingered. The Serbian needed a medical timeout for a back issue and left the court for treatment. He’d already been managing aches all season—leg muscle torn at the Australian Open, a heavy fall at Wimbledon that needed a physio check, and a neck tweak resurfacing this week. Even in New York, trainers have been busy: blisters in round one, lower back trouble later, and now a test against a lefty who loves to drag you deep and make you question your legs.
For a set and a half, Djokovic controlled the airspace. He served with purpose, took the first set 6-4, and kept Norrie off balance with sharp changes of pace. Then the tie-break flipped things. Norrie found forehand depth and used his cross-court patterns to rush Djokovic, who coughed up a couple of loose points and watched the second set slip away. Suddenly there was a grimace, a stretch for the hip and lower back, and a short walk to the locker room.
If you’ve watched him for years, you’ve seen this movie. He returned with a cooler head and a harsher game plan. The third set opened with danger—an early break chance for Norrie—but Djokovic shoved the door shut, flattened his backhand, and cut the rallies to size. In 20 minutes, the match flipped again. He took the third set 6-2, bossed the baseline with that elastic defense, and began to cash in on second serves. The fourth set, 6-3, was a controlled descent. No theatrics, just scoreboard pressure.
The most telling moments came between the points. He shortened the toss when the back tightened, leaned into the serve-plus-forehand play, and hugged the baseline on returns to avoid long, bending rallies. Norrie tried to run him, as he should, but Djokovic rarely gave him two short balls in a row. It was an exercise in landing the plane without burning fuel.
After the handshake, the humor came out. Staring down the camera, he grinned: “It’s alright. Had some ups and downs, you don’t wanna reveal too much to the rivals listening and watching this interview.” A beat later, he doubled down for the audience at home: “To my rivals watching this interview, I’m good, as young as ever, and as strong as ever.” Then, with the adrenaline fading, the candor followed in the press room. He admitted he’s more worried about his body now than at any point in his career. At 38, even with meticulous care, nothing feels guaranteed.
The record he just broke is about staying power as much as it is about peak. Hard courts don’t forgive. They reward precision, punishment, and patience, and ask for the same again 48 hours later. Surpassing Federer on this surface speaks to two decades of winning heavy matches in Australia and New York—on slow nights, on fast afternoons, in tiebreaks, and in aches. It doesn’t add to his 24 major titles, but it says a lot about why he has them.
Context helps. His 2025 has looked like a highlight reel spliced with a treatment log. In January, he tore a leg muscle in Melbourne and still soldiered on. At Wimbledon, he took a scary spill that needed a stop for assessment. Here, it’s been a checklist: first the feet, then the lower back, now the neck, and somehow the level keeps rising when the moments get loud. That’s not luck; that’s experience, ego management, and an ability to reset the body on the fly.
If you’re trying to explain to someone what separates a champion from a great player, point them to the third set of this match. After dropping the second in a breaker and flirting with a break against him early in the third, Djokovic started to conserve steps and increase intent. He aimed deeper through the middle to cut off Norrie’s angles. He used the slice backhand to keep the ball low on Norrie’s forehand takeback, then pounced on the short one. And when he needed free points, he found the wide serve on the deuce side and the T on the ad.
- Key swing: saving an early break point in set three, then sprinting to 4-1 with cleaner first-strike tennis.
- Physical pivot: a medical timeout for the back, followed by shorter, sharper rallies.
- Scoreboard calm: 6-2, 6-3 to close, with fewer trips past five-shot exchanges.
The gear and the mood told a story, too. The all-black kit played into the New York theatre, but there was a practical edge—no fuss, no frills, tape where needed, and a face that didn’t overreact to misses. If he grimaced after a long sprint, he took a breath and walked to the towel with purpose. You could almost see the checklists—hydrate, stretch, adjust return position, buy time on the serve clock—running in his head.
The crowd understood the stakes. Federer’s hard-court mark felt untouchable for a long time. For Djokovic to pass it not with a peak-season sprint but in a year of patchwork recovery says everything about his longevity. It’s not the dominance of a 25-year-old, it’s the know-how of a pro who has won almost every kind of match you can script: blowouts, escapes, five-set grinders with taped ribs, and now a back-managed four-setter against a tireless counterpuncher.
What makes this run different is how open he is about the calculus. He knows Father Time isn’t a myth. He also knows how to ration pain. He no longer chases every point on instinct; he builds pockets inside sets and leans into them. He doesn’t need to be perfect—he needs to be perfect for eight minutes at a time. That’s where his experience cashes in.
Some nights, the serve becomes the shelter. He doesn’t have the raw pace of a booming server, but he has location, disguise, and nerve. Against Norrie, that meant leaning on the ad-court T serve under pressure and using the body serve to steal cheap returns. Add a return that still reads tosses like a safecracker, and you’ve got a formula that travels even when the back tightens.
On the mental side, the split personality of the night—jokes for the camera, honesty for the notepads—fit the picture. He plays the villain in New York when he wants to. The black kit, the stare into lens, the "I’m good, as young as ever" line—those are messages to the locker room as much as entertainment for the stands. But the admission that he’s more concerned about his body than ever is the real headline for the week. He knows recovery windows are shrinking and margins are thin.
Managing pain, mastering moments—and what comes next
Now he faces Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals, an American with a first serve that can buy him time and a backhand sturdy enough to trade. The crowd will lean home. The pace will be higher. The points will be shorter by design. Their history offers a hint: back in 2021, at the Australian Open, Djokovic played through an abdominal issue and beat Fritz in five sets. Different tournament, different decade of his life, same message—he can problem-solve while taped up.
How does he prep for that next step? Expect the full menu: lighter practice the day before, treatment on the back and neck, deliberate serving patterns in the opening games to set the tone, and a focus on first-strike tennis to avoid 20-ball rallies. The return will matter most. If he parks on the baseline and gets good looks at Fritz’s second serve, he can steer the match. If he’s forced to defend behind the baseline from the start, the back will feel it.
There’s also the seasonal story to consider. This has been the year of the checklist: leg, foot, back, neck. If you follow his team on court, you see the routines—band work before warmups, posture resets, and the little stretches between points that look casual but aren’t. He’s shaving pain where he can and accepting what he can’t change.
The larger meaning of this hard-court record sits somewhere between longevity and reinvention. Federer built a clean, aggressive relationship with concrete. Djokovic built a weatherproof one. When the surface slowed, he could grind. When it sped up, he took time away on the backhand and picked off second serves. New balls, old legs, same problem for opponents—he takes away their plan B and wins the match in the small spaces: corners, transitions, nerves.
Norrie will leave this one knowing he had a real window after that second-set breaker and early in the third. He played brave, especially off the forehand, and earned the right to swing. Djokovic slammed it shut by changing risk levels and shot patterns while limping on and off the gas. That’s how the greats steal momentum without looking flashy.
It’s easy to forget the basics when the numbers start piling up. Here are the big beats from a long night that mattered:
- The scoreline—6-4, 6-7, 6-2, 6-3—shows the dip and the surge. He absorbed Norrie’s best set, then won 12 of the next 17 games.
- The medical timeout wasn’t theatre. He went off court, got treatment for the back, and came back to shorten points by design.
- He now holds the men’s record for hard-court wins at majors, moving past Federer. That’s years of New York and Melbourne pressure distilled into one number.
- He advances with more tape and another test looming: Taylor Fritz in the quarters.
One more thing about the vibe on Ashe: it rewards performance more than name. Djokovic earned the noise in the third and fourth sets by looking solid, not sensational. New York respects the grind. He delivered it without asking.
As for the legacy talk, it doesn’t really pause, even when the trainer’s bag is never too far away. The 24 majors sit there. The age sits there. The body, now openly fragile in ways he rarely allowed before, sits there too. This record doesn’t close any debates, but it keeps him at the center of them. And this tournament, where he’s had triumphs and heartbreaks, still feels like the right stage for a late-career run fueled by nerve and know-how.
He won’t say it out loud, at least not yet, but the blueprint is clear: get through the next match with efficient serving, protect the back with aggressive court position, and let experience do the rest. If the pain spikes, buy time. If the arm loosens, press. If the crowd tilts, bend it. Somewhere between the jokes to the camera and the honest words to reporters, you see the same competitor who’s built a career on turning complicated nights into simple wins.
The milestones, one by one, keep falling. The concern, honest and real, keeps rising. That tension is the story of his 2025 season so far—and the reason his matches are must-watch again. However this US Open ends, the night he passed Federer’s hard-court tally while playing with a taped back will sit near the top of the reel: a champion still rewriting the record book, one careful step at a time.
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