Novak Djokovic faces from this Tuesday a date with history at the US Open, where he aspires to become the first tennis player in the Open Era to win all four Grand Slam in it, something that no one has achieved since Rod Laver in 1969; and, what is more important, get his twenty-first Grand Slam, becoming the tennis player with the greatest in history and breaking the tie he now maintains with his two great rivals: Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal.
To understand the success of Djokovic and how it has been forged, you have to take a look at the Serbian achievements in the golden age of the Big Three, in which Djokovic, Federer and Nadal have shared 60 of the 72 Grand Slam that have been played since 2003.
Nevertheless, the statistics are devastating in favor of the ‘Djoker’ if we only analyze the figures from the year 2011. Since then Djokovic has achieved a whopping 19 Grand Slam by Nadal’s 11 and Federer’s 4. In fact, at this time Djokovic has added 232 Grand Slam victories to Nadal’s 171 and Federer’s 161.
Another of the achievements of Djokovic in this decade has had an impact on the ATP ranking, since the Serbian has added his 337 weeks at the head of the ATP ranking (those of the US Open are counted) since 2011, surpassing the absolute record of 310 that Federer had, which has only been 25 weeks number 1 since then, and distancing himself from Rafa Nadal, who has stayed at 209. Djokovic wants to put the finishing touch now on this prodigious decade that has made him write great chapters in the history of tennis with the conquest of his 21st Grand Slam at the US Open.