By Linda Pearce
The Melbourne Park courts were still green back in 2005, as was a young Novak Djokovic, the qualifier who lost to eventual champion Marat Safin in the opening round. A memory Djokovic harbours is not one you would expect. "That's the first time and only time that I've actually coloured my hair before a tennis match," says the five-time champion of his Australian Open debut.
Stop to picture it, just briefly, for a Bowie-like chameleon the single-minded Serbian is not. And given that the fierce black bristles are as much of a Djokovic trademark as those helmets worn by London's palace guards, one struggles to imagine what other colour his hair might actually have been.
Djokovic celebrates during his third round match against Andreas Seppi.Credit: Getty Images
Dyed? Really?
Apparently. Djokovic admits that what he laughingly recalls as an experimental shade of "yellow" was the suggestion of "a very kind lady in the beauty salon, but it was fun". An internet search reveals nothing terribly dramatic, but a subtle hint of Duran Duran darkish blonde around the forehead. Was it a good look? Not exactly.
And not a good tennis result, either, with Djokovic claiming just three games in three sets against the enigmatic Russian shot-maker and charismatic off-court character who inspired so many would-be entertainers of the current generation. Back in 2005, the year the resolutely blue-collar Lleyton Hewitt reached his only final, Djokovic apologised later for the one-sided show; Safin, who would go on to beat Hewitt, wondered why.
Now the question is: who can deny Djokovic a record-equalling sixth Australian title, to tie with Roy Emerson, whose achievement came in another time. He enters his fourth round clash with 14th seed Gilles Simon having been pushed to only one tiebreak set so far, and after a pre-Open final in Doha against Rafael Nadal that was so emphatic it came as close to perfection as his great Spanish rival has ever seen.
So. Perfection. Even accepting that the rave Rafa review may have been given some small context by fading Nadal's subsequent first-round loss to Fernando Verdasco, what does hearing that critique mean to Djokovic? How close does a player who likes to say that "if you seek perfection you can reach excellence" feel he has become? And is he nearer than before?
"It's hard to judge really, it's hard to say," the 10-slam champion told Fairfax Media in an exclusive interview. "I don't think that there is a perfection because we're all humans and we all have our flaws, and this is part of who we are, part of our DNA, so it's hard to say what we are actually going for, and what percentage of the (perfect) game do we have now?
"But I think that I've played one of the best matches that I've played against Rafa on hardcourts, no doubt about that, and after the 2015 season the way it went for me as being the best and most successful season I've had, this was exactly what I've needed to give me wings at the beginning of the next season.
"Obviously losing only five, six matches in a year, and winning three out of four grand slams, and just playing so well consistently throughout the whole year, you start to question yourself naturally if you can top that. But I've been trying to direct my thoughts only on what I can influence, and that is to follow the same kind of lifestyle and to continue working on myself and my game, grow, evolve and be in the present moment, and just focus on the tournament and the next challenges.
"I try to expect now days as less as possible from myself, because I don't need unnecessary additional pressure. I already have a pressure as being the world's top tennis player, and everywhere I go I'm expected to win, so I don't need an additional pressure from myself to expect something. Whether or not I'm going to have a better season than last year, I don't know, but of course I'm hoping for that, and I'm always aiming for the best."
So, perfection. Let's revisit that in another sense. These "flaws" Djokovic mentioned, what are they in his private life? Does he snore, perhaps? Leave the toilet seat up? Even though he is no longer the unguarded, spontaneous character this reporter first sat down with in Perth in 2008, this question seems to prompt genuine amusement. No dunny-seat disclosures follow, though, just faults of punctuality and patience.
"Even though I have a watch on my hand I don't think it serves the purpose that it should," he smiles. "It's more for cosmetics rather than for time. But I am working on that.
"And sometimes I would like to have a little bit more patience, because the kind of a lifestyle that I have, everything is very dynamic and obviously naturally you want things to happen very quickly. So I am more patient than I was 10 years ago when I started playing professional tennis, but I feel like I still need to work on that And it's great, because there's always something to work on, and I am open-minded and I try to embrace life's lessons."
Attempting to replicate his extraordinary 82-6, three grand slam season is the pressing on-court challenge, and Djokovic acknowledges the difficulty of following-up the finest season of one's career, when, even for the most disciplined, meticulously-prepared professional, one who lists nutrition as a hobby, success on this scale relies on so many things going right.
As Djokovic points out, life is not the same as it was four years ago, either. He married long-time sweetheart Jelena Ristic in July 2014, with son Stefan born three months later. He has lost just six matches since Stefan arrived, and joked last week that "Darling, I guess we've got to make more babies", when interviewed post-match on Rod Laver Arena. Hmmm. Not sure how that was one was received back-in-Monaco by Mrs D.
"I am a father now, I'm a husband, I have a family, and it's completely different, and I need to readjust to the life's demands," he says. "Not that I think that that can cause a distraction or something like that; in contrary, (Stefan) has brought me a new dimension and force on the tennis court, but also serenity off the court, and I'm able to balance things in life much better now that I'm a father, and results are showing that, actually. But, it's different, and as you go along you learn how to adjust."
Djokovic has done it so effectively, and such is the points chasm to world No.2 Andy Murray that it is hard to see how he will be beaten this fortnight, at his most successful major, while at the peak of his formidable powers, and in such rude good health that instead of the sugar-laced chocolates he traditionally hands out in the media room after his first and last news conferences of the season, he was left this time to extol the virtues of, ahem, energy balls. Is he, in one respect, almost too good for the game?
"I honestly doubt that I'm too good for tennis, even though I understand that people start to speculate about this and any other similar subjects because of the season that I've had in 2015," he says. "But I was not the only player in the history that ever had such dominance. You have the very recent history, Nadal, and Federer, so it's normal, every certain number of years you have a new player that dominates, that just everything clicks for him and he's able to get the best out of himself and his abilities, and be so consistent."
That, currently, would be an all-conquering Djokovic – the mature version coming without the "yellow" boy band highlights, but so many of a different kind, as the superiority of the sport's leading man at Melbourne Park is now in black-and-white for all to see. The old Rebound Ace is long gone, replaced with blue Plexicushion. But green with envy? His rivals? Another colour palette, and story, entirely.