Novak Djokovic is expected to miss Wimbledon after undergoing immediate surgery on the medial meniscus tear which forced him to withdraw from the French Open.
As the recovery process will take a minimum of three weeks, Djokovic has only the remotest chance of being ready for July 1 – the first day of Wimbledon. Even if he were technically fit to start the tournament, he would have had next to no on-court preparation on grass.
It’s not all bad news for Djokovic, however. According to sources in Serbia, the operation was a success, and the damage to his meniscus – a shock-absorbing pad of cartilage – was on the less severe end of the scale.
It sounds, then, as if he could be in the running to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris in seven weeks’ time. The Olympic gold medal is about the only prize in tennis that he has never won.
A report in the L’Equipe newspaper claimed that Djokovic visited a Parisian clinic and was treated by a young French surgeon.
His likely absence from Wimbledon will mark the end of an era. You have to go back to 1998 for the last time that the tournament went ahead without Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Djokovic – although it wasn’t until 2003 that Federer won his first major title and thus announced the entry of a gilded generation.
In an unexpected twist, it looks as if Andy Murray – who did battle with those three giants throughout his career – could be the elder statesman with the best chance of collecting a couple of wins in SW19 this year. Stan Wawrinka and Gael Monfils are also on the entry list.
Judging by updates from Sport Klub, a Serbian news site, it seems as though Djokovic has probably got away with a debridement, which involves a keyhole surgeon trimming out the rough parts of the meniscus left by a minor tear.
This is the same procedure that American No 1 Taylor Fritz underwent in 2021. Having been wheeled off the courts of Roland Garros after tearing his meniscus in a second-round defeat, Fritz still managed to win a couple of rounds at Wimbledon a month or so later. But then, he was 20 at the time. At 37, Djokovic will heal more slowly, and is also likely to be more conservative in his timetable.
A more serious tear involves stitching the meniscus – which is effectively a shock absorber made of cartilage – back together. The trouble is that there is very limited blood supply to this part of the body, so healing can take many months. In the most problematic cases, the joint never recovers properly.
The very experience of undergoing surgery is unfamiliar for Djokovic, whose only previous operation was on the chronic right elbow problem that forced him out of the 2017 US Open. To date, this remains the one major he has missed through injury.
“I just cried for two or three days,” Djokovic told Telegraph Sport in 2018. “I cried after I had the surgery on my elbow. Every time I thought about what I did, I felt like I had failed myself.
“I was trying to avoid getting on that table because I am not a fan of surgeries or medications,” he added. “I am just trying to be as natural as possible, and I believe that our bodies are self-healing mechanisms. Luckily for me the surgery was done right, very well. But I was feeling guilty for maybe a month or two afterwards.”
Returning to the knee issue, Sport Klub quoted physio Dobrosav Melajac, who was watching Djokovic’s ill-fated match against Francisco Cerundulo on Monday evening with tennis coach Petar Popovic.
“When he slipped we said in unison, ‘meniscus!’” explained Melajac. “I didn’t think it was of a more serious nature, especially since he played at such a high level in the fourth and fifth sets. [But] when I watched his press conference, it did worry me, the way he talked about the injury.
“The surface on Court Philippe Chatrier is one of the reasons for the injury,” Melajac added. “I saw that Nole [Djokovic] also spoke about it – that the surface was soft and not at the usual level. Corentin [Moutet, who is coaxed by Popovic] was warming up for the match with Sinner at Chatrier, and he commented several times that the court is not in the condition they are used to.”
