It was long. It was dramatic. But was it everything it was billed to be? Tactical Tennis says "no." While many tennis writers rushed to call the final between Djokovic and Nadal at the Australian Open this year the new 'greatest match ever' (replacing the 2008 Wimbledon Final between Nadal and Federer), it was far from it. In truth, the quality of tennis was, as a whole, far lower than that played in either of the semi-finals that preceded it.
The match was always going to be decided essentially by one thing: Nadal's position in the court. More specifically, his depth in the court relative to the baseline. Nadal has a history of playing too defensively on faster surfaces - particularly against tall players with flat, penetrating backhands. When Nadal gets pushed back, his forehand tends to drop shorter in the court, allowing his opponent to step up and hit through more. This, of course keeps Nadal deep in the court on the defensive, and the pattern largely continues. The pressure was on Nadal to step up and change something. And for the duration of the tournament he had been making an effort. As he said in his post-match interview after beating Federer:
"Yeah, I happy about how I am doing. Any time to do this during all the match, as I am doing for moments for moments I am playing a little bit like before but when I am able to play inside, to play aggressive, I think the things are working fantastic."
A brief look at the 'official statistics' for the match tells the story. The two players combined for a whopping 140 unforced errors (69 for Djokovic, 71 for Nadal) vs a 'mere' 101 winners. Djokovic was firmly ahead in the winners count, racking up 57 to Nadal's 44. Nadal played a far more defensive match than we had seen from him throughout the entire tournament. He played the majority of his points from behind the baseline, and hit a simply shocking number of slice backhands. It was a reversion to the clay mentality for Nadal, and a disappointing one given his performance against Federer in the previous round (and indeed for most of the rest of the tournament).
More than anything, it speaks to Nadal's mindset when he steps onto the court to play Djokovic now. Gone is his conviction, his confidence wavers. It isn't that he stops fighting - in fact the only reason the match even went 5 sets this time was due to Nadal's fighting spirit. When Nadal takes the court against Federer, he is confident. He knows his game-plan - as well he should since it is essentially the same (with minor variations) every time and has been for years. Nadal's strengths align beautifully with Federer's weaknesses. Djokovic however asks Nadal a very different set of questions on the court than Federer does. Some of the things that make Nadal such a formidable opponent against most players actually play straight into Djokovic's hands.
There were moments of sustained great hitting - some of the rallies late in the 5th set especially (32 shots in a row at almost a dead sprint anyone?) were almost shocking with their ferocity. The problem is that those mostly came in moments when Nadal stepped up and showed the same attacking spirit had put on display for most of the championships. The rest of the time he was far too content to let Djokovic set the pace. Oftentimes you could see this even within a rally. Nadal would start out aggressively, but the moment Djokovic got slightly ahead in the point, Nadal would surrender control without a fight.
Where does this leave them? What can we expect moving forward?
Nadal: Simply has to find a way to step up and maintain aggression against Djokovic. Perhaps the single most telling statistic for the match is the fact that Djokovic won a phenomenal 62% of points on his second serve. This shows how passive Nadal was - and how much it is needed for him to step up and take some risks. I never thought I would say it, but Nadal needs to take a page out of Andy Murray's book - Murray kept Djokovic's second serve win % down to a respectably low 42%.
Djokovic: Matches up well against Nadal playing his 'natural' game. He finds himself in the enviable position Nadal held with respect to Federer for so long. His strengths align nicely with Nadal's weaknesses, and the pressure is on the Spaniard to change the dynamic between them.
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