Djokovic's dream for Golden Grand Slam ends

The World No.1 Novak Djokovic’s bid for a calendar Golden Grand Slam dream  ended on a very sad note. The Olympic gold medal was the only major honour missing from his long list of accolades. The Serbian star has already won the Australian Open, the French Open and the Wimbledon in the current calendar month. Had he won the Olympic gold in Tokyo and the US open, he would have emulated Steffi Graf. Steffi had achieved the feat in 1988 by winning the Golden Grand Slam.

After losing out an opportunity to become first men’s player to complete a Golden Slam, Djokovic finished the singles campaign at the Tokyo Olympics without a medal. He had last time won the 2008 Beijing Olympics bronze medal in the men’s singles. Remarkably, Djokovic lost ten of the last 11 games of the match and looked drained of energy as he congratulated his victorious opponent at the net.

Djokovic lost to   Pablo Carreno Busta despite saving the match points in the bronze medal tie. In a tightly- fought 3^rd place match, he went down to  the Spaniard 4-6,7-6, 3-6. Earlier in the semi-finals on Friday, Germany’s Alexander Zverev dramatically knocked World No.1 Djokovic out of the coveted gold rush. The German 4^th seed Zverev beat him 1-6, 6-3,6-1 and set up Sunday final against Russia’s Karen Khachanov.