September is New Year for summer sports. Tennis players would normally have a new spring in their step this weekend and clubs would be opening their courts to newcomers looking to get back into the game. Not this weekend though. At Level 4 or 3, the only sport wehave is on TV.
And, happily, something rare and truly grand is happening in tennis on TV. For the first time in 50 years we may be about to see a man win a genuine, honest to God, 24-carat Grand Slam.
If Novak Djokovic wins this US Open he will have collected all four major titles this year, the first man to do so since Rod Laver in 1969. You will already know that if you scan the sports pages, but unless you have waited as long as I have to see this, you might not fully appreciate it.
To win the Australian, French, Wimbledon and American championships in the same year seemed merely remarkable in 1969. Laver had done it before in 1962. But in the interim tennis had fully embraced professionalism and nobody realised in 1969 how hard it would be to bag all four in the open era.
To get a sense of how hard it is, you need only recall the list of champions who dominated their time but never managed a Grand Slam: John Newcombe, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer. The last woman to do it was Steffi Graf in 1988.
The holy grail of the game has come to seem so impossibly hard that the term Grand Slam has been co-opted for slightly less grand feats. Each of the four tournaments became a "grand slam event" and when players celebrated winning "a slam", they were referring to one of them.
Novak Djokovic reacts after winning his match against Tallon Griekspoor during the second round of the US Open tennis championships. Photo / AP
They are credited with a "non-calendar slam" for winning the four in succession but not in the same year, and a "career slam" for collecting all four at some stage.
Winning all four is hard because they are played on different surfaces. The Australian and American tournaments are on hard courts, the French Open is on clay and Wimbledon is on grass. Clay is usually the killer. Hardly any winner at Melbourne in January goes on to win at Paris in May.
Until Djokovic beat the "King of Clay", Rafael Nadal, in the semi-finals at Paris this year, I had almost given up hope of seeing another Grand Slam in my lifetime. Even now, with a week of the US Open to go, it is tempting fate to be writing about it. But fate might be kind to me in a Level 4 lockdown. I need some excitement right now.
It surprises me that we have not been reading and hearing more this week about the feat Djokovic is on the verge of achieving in New York. Even US television coverage has not been talking it up, unlike the two years when they wouldn't stop counting Serena Williams' chickens before they hatched. (They didn't).
Maybe they don't want to tempt fate again, or maybe they've lost sight of the pinnacle of the sport. They are more interested in the fact that if Djokovic wins this one he will beat the record of 20 "slams" he shares with Federer and Nadal. Either way, victory for him next weekend would settle the matter of who is the greatest.
Many will be reluctant to remove the crown from Federer. Crowds have never taken Djokovic to their hearts as they do his great contemporaries. He lacks Federer's cool elegance and Nadal's gritty, sweaty appeal. Djokovic is clockwork on court, precisely tuned, highly efficient, faultless to a fault.
Becker, who has worked with him in recent years, says Djokovic is hurt when crowds don't get behind him. He deserves better. No player is more dedicated to his sport, more professional. He is clearly a leader in the players' association and considerate to opponents on court.
He is the latest in a succession of champions who have given young tennis players a fine model, repairing much of the damage done to the sport in the now distant era of Connors, McEnroe and Nastase.
McEnroe, an insightful commentator these days, despairs for today's lone brat, Nick Kyrgios, whose first-round loss this week proved yet again that a bad attitude may be entertaining but is ultimately self-destructive.
Djokovic was entertaining in a better way as a young player, doing impressions of Nadal and Maria Sharapova on court. Then he got serious, worked harder and began to beat the best.
Now he is within reach of a summit unconquered for half a century. If he gets there I'll be forever grateful to have lived to see it.
