Until Friday, this year’s Australian Open was highly predictable and spiritually dull. So anticlimactic and upset free were the first 12 days that the story of the tournament had been the peaceful manner in which Coco Gauff, reeling from her quarterfinals loss, sought out a private area in the bowels of Rod Laver Arena to dismantle her racquet (she was caught on-camera, prompting 48 hours of discourse about surveillance and privacy or the lack thereof). On the men’s side, fans, pundits, and bookies agreed the whole tournament was sort of a mandatory preamble to yet another face-off between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, who have met in the finals of the past three majors and strengthened their choke hold over the rest of the tour.

But the greatest player in men’s tennis history had other ideas.

Over the past two seasons, 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic, accustomed to being on top for so long, had emerged as a consistent third wheel to the Sinner-Alcaraz duopoly, reaching four major semifinals and losing to one of them at each. At 38 — an unthinkable age to be going this deep into majors........

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