MELBOURNE, Australia — This is what it looks like when the Australian Open, or any Grand Slam tournament, begins to pivot in Novak Djokovic’s direction.
A couple of decent tests in the first couple of matches to work out the kinks against young players he might invite for a practice set at one of his four haunts. Monte Carlo or Marbella, Montenegro or Belgrade. Some moments of stress are needed to get the body and the brain used to firing under pressure.
Ideally, there are different challenges in each battle. A steady baseliner one night. A free-swinger with a booming serve the next.
“Another big test, another three-hour match, back to back against the youngsters,” Djokovic said after he needed four sets to beat a player aged 21 or younger and appearing in their maiden Grand Slam for the second round in a row, seeing off Portuguese qualifier Jaime Faria 6-1, 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-2.
He liked how he started and how he finished those matches. He felt his level rising incrementally with each one, a process he has honed through his long evolution into a Grand Slam machine.
Djokovic has been a master of peaking when he needs to at majors for as long as most tennis fans can remember — until last year in Melbourne, when a defeat to Jannik Sinner heralded a sequence with more suffering than he’s been used to in the four biggest tennis events. An injury at the French Open. Another final, but a humbling defeat to Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon. An upset against Alexei Popyrin at the U.S. Open.
At some point in that process, the fight arrives, which makes it all very real.
That’s what Friday should deliver in the form of Tomas Machac, a 24-year-old Czech who has become one of the flavors of the moment among tennis aesthetes, its latest if-you-know-you-know indie band. He’s the guy with the jumping forehands and the floating all-court game who doesn’t necessarily have one fearsome weapon, but rather a varied arsenal that lights up the eyes rather than stat sheets.
World No. 25 Machac also has one of the more combustible brains on the ATP Tour. One minute he’s rolling along, looking like the second coming of Roger Federer. The next, for reasons he now knows but for a long while didn’t, he leaves the tracks and becomes a misfiring highlight machine.
That’s been happening far less over the past year. He blew up in the United Cup semifinal against Taylor Fritz two weeks ago in Sydney, amid cramping and a missed match point that had him flinging rackets and screaming at coaches and teammates. Tennis players have their moments, especially when their body and mind let them down as one.
Machac has already gotten through one of the game’s stiffest tests outside facing one of the top players in the rankings. He survived the ridiculous serve of the nearly seven-foot-tall Reilly Opelka, a mind-numbing exercise that usually brings a series of tiebreaks, depressing walks back and forth between return positions and immense pressure to hold your serve. Opelka had knocked Djokovic out of the previous event in Brisbane.
After three and a half hours and five sets, three of them decided by tiebreaks, Machac had earned himself a date with the 10-time Australian Open champion and the greatest player of the modern era.
Tomas Machac’s peaks and troughs are worlds apart on the tennis court. (Quinn Rooney / Getty Images)
“You never know with this guy,” he said of Djokovic afterwards — an odd statement, since the Serbian during the first week of the Australian Open has been one of tennis’ more bankable outcomes over the past 15 years. “I try to play my game.”
That game has come on like a speeding train over the past nine months. At this point last year, Machac was the lesser half of a couple with former girlfriend and compatriot Katerina Siniakova, one of the world’s top doubles players. A red carpet photo of the pair was captioned, “Katerina Siniakova and guest.”
In March in Miami, Machac made a quarterfinal of a Masters 1000 for the first time, notching one of his first top 10 wins, against Andrey Rublev.
A few days later, in a tunnel under that event’s Hard Rock Stadium, Machac was asked why, by the standards of his profession, he had taken so long to get to this spot, given everyone in the locker room was fully aware of his obvious talents.
That launched him into a monologue that had almost nothing to do with how he held his racket when he hit a serve or a forehand, or how often he came to the net. For years, he said, he simply had not thought he was capable of getting to the last eight of a big tournament.
“I needed to believe in myself, that I can be in quarterfinals and sometimes achieve great results,” Machac said. “It’s not easy. You need to work, work, work, and the result sometimes comes, sometimes not. Even if you lose three matches in a row, four matches in a row, you need to believe in yourself. This is the key.”
Two months later, he blew past a physically-hampered Djokovic at the Geneva Open, when the latter was desperate for wins and matches on clay ahead of the French Open. He paired with Siniakova to win a mixed-doubles gold medal at the Olympics in Paris, then made the last 16 at the U.S. Open — his first visit to the second week of a Grand Slam.
The big breakthrough arrived in Shanghai, where he bested a flat Alcaraz in straight sets in the semifinals, then hung close with Sinner in the final.
“I can play with the best ones, for sure,” Machac said after that loss. “That is what I learned.”
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In other words, he believes — even if he has to keep reminding himself to do so.
It is the sort of stuff he has written down in the notebook that he consults during changeovers. He started the habit in 2023 after he brought it onto the court and won two consecutive Challenger-level tournaments.
That’s right. Machac, who has stretches of performing like the best player on the planet but endures stretches when it appears he has never been on a tennis court, was still playing Challengers 18 months ago. Sometimes, when the matches get nervy, he goes to the notebook to ease the stress and settle his emotions.
Enjoy the moment.
Don’t think about the results.
“Those basic words, it’s really important during those matches,” Machac said. “It needs to be really easy for me. Especially for me.”
He may need some words Friday night. Djokovic will be getting wisdom from Andy Murray, the fellow all-time great and former rival in his coaching box. Machac beat him last year, too.
Djokovic, known for his tirades and explosions at his support teams, has been doing nothing of the sort with Murray up there. After losing a set to the unheralded Faria on Wednesday night, he and Murray had a consultation that looked like a lawyer and his client having a quick sidebar during a run-of-the-mill negotiation.
More of those may be required with Machac on the other side of the net.
Maybe Machac is right — you never know with that guy.
(Top photo: Adrian Dennis / AFP via Getty Images)
