PARIS — Twelve months after his latest bid to complete a career Grand Slam was thwarted, Novak Djokovic targets an elusive French Open title with time and history threatening to conspire against him.
The world No. 1 was left in tears in 2015 when Stan Wawrinka unleashed a battery of single-handed backhand winners to all corners of Court Philippe Chatrier on his way to a shock Paris title.
Djokovic turns 29 Sunday and will be playing Roland Garros for a 12th time where he remains the overwhelming favorite to secure a trophy which would also place him halfway to the first calendar Grand Slam since 1969.
But tennis is littered with great names whose Grand Slam pedigree endured shattering reality checks on Roland Garros’s unforgiving crushed red brick surfaces.
Pete Sampras won 14 majors but 13 times the great American tried to win the French Open and 13 times he failed.
Stefan Edberg also made 13 fruitless visits while Djokovic’s coach Boris Becker tried nine times.
John McEnroe also flopped, the four-time US Open and three-time Wimbledon winner having to console himself with a runner-up spot in Paris in 1984.
Djokovic, with 11 majors under his belt, has come closer than all of them.
He has been runner-up three times and a semifinalist on four occasions.
His record in 2016 reads 37 wins and just three defeats although two of those came on clay — against Jiri Vesely in a freak Monte Carlo opening-round exit and a loss to Andy Murray in last weekend’s Rome final.
Djokovic starts in Paris against Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun, the world No. 100.
He is seeded to face Tomas Berdych in the last-eight before a potential semifinal blockbuster against nine-time champion Rafael Nadal in what would be the 50th meeting between the two superstars.
“I still feel like I have plenty of more years ahead of me, which gives me more comfort in terms of opportunities I’m going to have at the title of Roland Garros, which releases more pressure for me this year,” said the top seed.
“I don’t try to approach them from a point of view of being obsessed with this tournament.”
World No. 2 Murray is shaping up as Djokovic’s greatest threat.
He may be 8,000 points behind in the world rankings, but the former US Open and Wimbledon winner has developed a taste for clay relatively late in his career.
His 6-3, 6-3 win over Djokovic at the Foro Italico came on his 29th birthday.
Murray has steadily improved in Paris with three semifinal runs in his last four appearances, losing a five-set epic to Djokovic in 2015.
He faces 37-year-old Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek in the first round with a potential semifinal against Wawrinka.
Nadal was promoted to the fourth seeding after Roger Federer withdrew from the tournament with injury ending a run of 65 consecutive Grand Slam appearances stretching back to 1999.
Written off after a 2015 campaign saw him endure his worst season in a decade, the 29-year-old Spaniard won in Monte Carlo for the ninth time and then clinched the Barcelona crown to equal Guillermo Vilas’s record of 49 career clay-court titles.
A semi-final run in Madrid and quarterfinal spot in Rome — where it took Murray and Djokovic respectively to halt him — illustrated his enduring power.
Nadal starts his French Open against big-serving Sam Groth of Australia.
Defending champion Wawrinka, 30, has endured a roller-coaster clay-court season — a quarterfinal run in Monte Carlo followed by an opening loss in Madrid and just one victory in Rome.
World No. 6 Kei Nishikori of Japan remains an outside hope.
The 26-year-old was runner-up in Barcelona to Nadal and then lost semifinals to Djokovic in Madrid and Rome.
But Nishikori’s record at the French Open is modest with a quarterfinal spot last year representing his best performance.
Meanwhile, Serena Williams will have a third go at winning a 22nd Grand Slam singles title at the French Open, which would draw her level with Steffi Graf as the most successful female player in the Open era.
But to do so, the 34-year-old American will have to achieve something she has so far failed to manage — defend her crown in Paris.
Just three of Williams’ 21 Grand Slam titles have come in France — the first in 2002 and then a long gap until 2013 and 2015.
Williams, who won her first title in nine months in Rome last weekend, will begin her Paris defence against Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova, the world No. 76, who has yet to make it beyond the second round.
The American star insists she is feeling no pressure.
“I think now it’s different because I want to win more than I think most people ever, but also I think it’s different now because I don’t have anything to prove and I don’t have anything — it’s just a different feeling,” she said.
“Whereas five, ten years ago, oh, I’m defending and I feel that pressure. Now it’s like I’m defending, I’m in Paris, it’s cool, and I’m having, you know, the time of my life. I’m just happy to be here.”
