Roland Garros 2017 diary: Novak Djokovic's stunning loss to Dominic Thiem has left us all searching for answers

It wasn't supposed to end this way.

A year ago, Novak Djokovic was on top of the world, to put it mildly. He had become the first player ever to have mastered three different surfaces simultaneously, and for all practical purposes seemed poised to overtake Roger Federer's record Grand Slam tally of 17. It looked like a question of when, not if; so dominant was he at the time that the ATP had started to look like his personal playground.

Almost inevitably, he was asked about that during his post-match press conference; how different was he feeling now, compared to the high of last year?

"For me, this is a whole new situation that I am facing,” Djokovic said, “especially in the last 7-8 months, not winning any big tournaments. (But) it's not something that hasn't happened before for any player. All the top players have been through that, so I guess you gotta go through it, try and learn your lessons, and figure out a way to get out of it stronger.”

The Serb was spot on about this being a whole new situation for him, but he should probably have added that it's a whole new situation for everyone. It's not everyday that you see a defending champion being bounced out at the quarterfinal stage while getting bagelled. It's even less normal to see an utterly dominant champion being brought down to his knees in such sudden and disturbing fashion.

Djokovic wasn't just defeated today; he was mowed down to the point that he could barely summon the energy to put a single backhand in the court. The last set was all kinds of bizarre; it seemed impossible that any player, let alone a great one like Djokovic, could play that listlessly without having some kind of injury issue.

But he offered no hint of any kind of physical problem in his interview. "It's hard to comment on the third set; obviously, nothing was going my way, and everything his way.” And later, “All my respect and credit to my opponents; Dominic today played really good and he forced me to play the way I played – especially in the second and third sets.”

That's a little hard to digest. Are we supposed to believe that one of the greatest fighters that tennis has ever seen was forced to be part of one of the most one-sided sets in recent memory? Was Thiem really that good?

During the first set and a half, he was. His previous record against Djokovic seemed to be on the back of his mind, so he came out determined to do everything in his power to turn the script around. And there was certainly a lot of power for him to draw from.

In their previous matchups Djokovic had used his baseline efficiency to great effect, taking the ball early and robbing Thiem of the time he needed to unwind on his groundstrokes. So the Austrian looked to flip that switch today; he attacked relentlessly from the word go, pushing Djokovic behind and depriving him of the time to set up shop on the baseline and work the angles. And when you hit the ball as hard as Thiem, that's half the battle won.

The Thiem backhand in particular was a game-changer. He hit it crosscourt with depth and power, but more importantly, he was willing to go down the line whenever the opportunity arose. Just like in the match against Rafael Nadal in Rome last month, that shot widened the court for Thiem, setting up numerous forehand winners.

The Dominic Thiem backhand

But the Serb was up to the task, at least in the first set. He defended like a madman, employing the squash shot and whatever other trick he could conjure to make Thiem hit one extra ball. He went up a break early, but even when that lead evaporated, held two set points with the Austrian serving at 4-5.

That's when Thiem decided to remind everyone that his serve is a huge weapon too. He sent down a flurry of big ones to erase the break points and hold, and you got the feeling he had finally sunk his teeth into the rivalry.

But he still wouldn't have got the job done if he hadn't had help from Djokovic. The Serb missed six backhands in the tiebreaker to hand Thiem the set; his biggest weapon had turned into his biggest liability before our disbelieving eyes, and Thiem never looked back from there.

The second set was still fairly competitive, but the third decidedly wasn't. All the progress that Djokovic had made this claycourt season – reaching the final in Rome and digging out a couple of tough matches in the early rounds here – seemed to have come to a skidding halt as he missed one routine shot after another in the stunning third frame.

Even the crowd support, of which there was plenty, couldn't help. All the chants of “Let's go Djoko!” or “Ajde Nole!” failed to incite any kind of emotion in the Serb. After a while even his supporters gave up; when Thiem unleashed yet another piledriving forehand to get the break in the third set, one of Djokovic's vocal fans sitting near me murmured, “It's over.”

The way Djokovic was playing, I almost wanted to give that fan a hug.

“I don't expect to play as bad as I did,” Djokovic said later. “I don't wish that, I don't visualize that; I have high expectations of myself.”

He could well have been mouthing what we were all thinking. Nobody could have imagined it would come to this; nobody could have predicted such a crushing defeat against an opponent he had so effortlessly owned in the past.

As he signed off from the press conference, Djokovic suggested that it would be good for the tennis world in general if we stopped focusing so much on him, and started paying more attention to the young guns. He is right about that, but he is probably a little too modest to realize it's hard to stop focusing on champions as great as him.

“It's the next chapter for me. Obviously there are things to think about, to work on, and we'll see where it takes me,” were Djokovic's last words.

That should give his fans a little hope, yes? It wasn't supposed to end this way, but maybe this isn't the end.