PARIS—For the better part of four hours, in weather that had been unremittingly foul, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic had wrestled with nerves, errors, each other’s hard-nosed games, and a long-faced Roland Garros referee. Finally, at 5-5 in the fourth set, after another burst of light rain had brought the ref back on the court and nearly brought the two players off of it again, the sun had come out. For the first time in what seemed like weeks, the clay on Chatrier was back to its familiar bright orange. It felt like Roland Garros again.
Which means that it also felt like Rafael Nadal’s house again. Nadal has described the sun as “energy,” and midway through his service game at 5-5, he needed a surge of it himself. He had hit an ace to go up 30-0 in that game, but had watched as Djokovic had belted one of his customary leaping inside-out forehands past him to get back to 30-30. Djokovic was two points from serving for the set. It was hard to imagine Nadal, after being up two sets and being so close, turning the momentum around and winning a fifth.
It had been a match unlike any other I’d seen from Nadal. In each set, he had veered between confidence and anxiety. Despite his six titles here, his 10 majors, and his many wins over Djokovic in the past, Rafa grew hesitant with the lead. Nadal’s family and friends seemed to recognize that he needed a push to get him across this particular finish line, to beat the man who had beaten him in the last three Grand Slam finals, who had come back to steal the Australian Open from him in a fifth set. I’ve never seen the Nadal clan, all of them, so active in the stands. They stood and cheered when he walked toward to their corner before the first game, and they rarely stopped after that. They were out-Djokoviching the Djokovics.
Nadal admitted that he needed the help today. “This was a very complex final,” he said afterward, speaking specifically about the first two sets. “I had lost three Grand Slam finals in a row to him. That’s why it was important for me to win, and this was why I was a bit more nervous and there was a lot of emotions."
Nadal said that, after the match was called on Sunday, he had had a “hard night,” and had felt too anxious to play today until “three minutes before we went on court.”
Nadal had settled his nerves and played better in the fourth set; now it was 5-5, 30-30. The two players rallied, until Djokovic sent a forehand well over the baseline. You could almost see Nadal say to himself, “<em>Not this time; there’s no reason not to take it this time</em>.” At 40-30, he played as aggressively as he had all match. Nadal hit two full-throttle forehands and finished the point at the net, with a crosscourt drop volley. The nerves and the doubt, finally, had left him. At 6-5, Nadal didn’t give the lead back. He played another aggressive point at 30-30, finishing with a forehand winner to reach match point.
This was the moment when everyone, or at least every French fan who had watched Djokovic break their boy Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's heart in the quarterfinals, expected the Serb to jump out of his sneakers and fire a forehand winner. But the master of the match point never gave himself a chance to play Houdini. Instead, as he had against Rafa in Rome, Djokovic double-faulted.
I sympathized watching Nadal in defeat in Melbourne, and I felt the same for Djokovic today as he watched his last serve fly over the service line, dropped his head, and slumped toward the net. It was an unworthy way for his quest for four straight Slams to end. The timing made it doubly unfortunate. In each of this match’s two days, Djokovic had started slowly and dug himself out of a hole, only to be cut short at the end. On Sunday he had won eight straight games before being pulled off because of bad weather. Today, with a tiebreaker and a fifth set in sight, he had pulled the plug on himself.
Djokovic said that the overnight break had hurt him, but he refused to make it an excuse. “I was ready to continue on and play last night,” he said, “but they decided to stop because the weather conditions were not good. I was OK with that. I’m not going back and saying, ‘OK, it’s your fault because I lost.’”
Listening to Djokovic before and after this match, and watching the way he played it, I had the feeling that it was a sort of test run in his mind. Djokovic emphasized beforehand that it would be his first French final against the all-time champ here, and that it was “the ultimate challenge.” He was unsure of himself at the start of the match, as if he had read one too many of Rafa’s rave reviews. Finally, in a business-like post-match presser, he said, “I lost this time. But I believe that there are still many years to come, and I hopefully I can come back stronger.”
