A large piece of skin painfully hangs from the ball of Novak Djokovic’s foot.
The 10-time Australian Open champion, who is rewriting the record books at Melbourne Park, grimaces as a medic treats an exposed, red raw blister that appears to have popped during his quarterfinal clash against Lorenzo Musetti.
Djokovic is two sets down, but the scoreboard doesn’t seem to be of immediate concern as the courtside medic sprays the oozing wound and then affixes various forms of tape – steristrips for closure, and padding. Lots of padding.
A few minutes later the medic leaves the changeover bench, and Djokovic moves out of the brace position that he was in.
The Serbian hides his heavily bandaged foot with a brilliant white sock, and then puts an equally pristine runner back on, returning to the court effortlessly, as though nothing was wrong.
It’s a moment reminiscent of that well-documented photograph of a ballerina’s feet — one perfectly poised in a pointe shoe, the other perfectly poised but bare and destroyed, demonstrating the hidden and sometimes agonising toll of professional sport, in which tennis is not immune.
Some physical tolls, like Djokovic’s blister, are more obvious than others, like the suspected muscle tear that forced Musetti to retire in the third set, with what Tennis Australia senior physiotherapist Alan Obst described as “an acute injury”.
“I had a blister that needed to be looked at and retaped. That's what I did last match, and now,” Djokovic said ahead of his semi-final clash against defending champion Jannik Sinner on Friday.
“You always have some minor issues with your body, at least for me, every single day. But major issues, no.
Thankfully, that's still not posing a challenge for me to be able to play and move around the way I want to.
“It is a very physical game. I mean, it's an individual sport, so I think [the] example with Musetti is really clearly showing how challenging this sport is.
“You know, he was a better player on the court. He was close to winning it. He was in the control, and then obviously something happens.
“If you are part of team sports, then maybe you go out and somebody substitutes you for a set, and then you attend to your physical issue and maybe get a better chance to close out the match, but that's not possible in our sport.
“That's the beauty of tennis, as an individual sport, but also a huge challenge. You always have to be at your best, and particularly at these final stages of a Grand Slam.
“We all put in the hours. We all try to work hard, but sometimes things like this happen in the heat of the battle, where you are straining your body, and taking the body to the fullest of the limits.
“Emotions play a big part. You tense up, so you are not moving as fluidly as you are maybe in practice sessions, and then there is a high risk of injury, which is what happened to me, to be honest, several times last year at a Slam, so I know exactly the feeling.
“It's horrible, particularly when you are feeling you're playing very well, like he was, and you can't perform the way you want to. It's just your body is not letting you. That's a hard one to swallow, but that's the sport we are in.”
There is no physical way to heal a severe blister within 48 hours but Obst’s job as a senior physiotherapist is to try and prevent event injuries, or what he describes as “niggles”, which can drastically affect performance in a Grand Slam.
“If you’re five per cent off physically at this level it can absolutely be the difference between winning and losing,” Obst told AusOpen.com.
“Whether it’s physical stress or emotional stress, you do see these stressors physically turn up in someone’s body, and a lot of what we do is definitely that unofficial psychologist’s role where you’re listening and have close relationships with these players.
“Some of it is sports performance — they’re nervous about the match. They’re normal adults as well, they have other stressors in their life, and the more we understand about that the better the relationship is going to be, and the more adequate our treatment is going to be.”
Australian Alex de Minaur has previously talked about the importance of nutrition to performance, saying he started consciously fuelling for some of his AO 2026 matches the day before.
Similarly, Obst will spend time working with players before matches to activate their muscles, and if necessary, afterwards as well to aid recovery with relaxation techniques.
Obst will assess physical complaints from the day before, the week before, and also range of movement through various joints — from the spine to hips and ankles.
“I’ll try to restore as much joint mobility as I can and after they’ve finished with me, then they’ll move on to their own active warm-up with their strength and conditioning coaches before their pre-match hit, and if they have any limitations in their pre-match warm-up hit, they’ll often see me again for a bit of top-up treatment after that,” he said.
“Often before players get to their match they’ve been on court for at least 30 minutes – 45 minutes sometimes, they’ve had at least 30 minutes of physio, sometimes 30 minutes with an additional 20 minutes, and they’ve spent at least 30 minutes with their strength and conditioning coaches doing their active warm-up, mobility and muscle activation exercises.”
Whilst daily massage and mobility treatments may sound relaxing, they’re not, especially the further you get into the Australian Open and a Grand Slam. Longer matches and, as Djokovic alludes, higher stakes and emotions, can often translate to less mobility, greater muscle strain and more punishing treatments.
“We’re hard taskmasters,” Obst said. “The treatments themselves are firm and not very enjoyable to be honest, getting your tight muscles released, and then we make them get in the gym, and they don’t want to. It’s a love/hate relationship unfortunately.
“I always make the running joke, it’s not Endota Spa here. At the end of the day, if you’re getting adequate physio, it really shouldn’t feel nice because getting sore muscles released thoroughly, it’s a really painful experience. You have to see the forest through the trees because it’s necessary for the next day, but at the time when you are getting a good sports massage, or getting physio, a lot of the time it’s not very fun.”
Over the years Obst has noticed that the difference between a great tennis player and GOATs sometimes comes down to minute details, including being vigilante with niggles as Djokovic and Sinner, who has been managing cramps throughout his title defence, have been.
“The toll on everyone is huge and when you’re talking about sports in general, like LeBron James or Novak Djokovic, in my experience, the real greatest of all time seem to be the ones that take the absolute best care of their body because there is just no other way around it,” Obst said.
“If you make a Grand Slam final, you have to get through six matches, so you’re playing every second day for 12 days just to get to the final level. The way the body is made up, you’re going to regress over time. So, what we’re trying to do as physios, we’re not really trying to improve people, that’s not realistic, but what we are trying to do is maintain what they do have leading into the tournament.”