Kei Factor

NEW YORK—For three hours on Saturday, tennis fans around the world played a long game of “Waiting for Nole” together. Those of us who had watched him on semifinal Saturday at the U.S. Open for the last four years were pretty sure that, even if it took him five sets and five hours, Novak Djokovic would eventually show up, and show his opponent, Kei Nishikori, the door.

In each of the last four Septembers at Flushing Meadows, Djokovic has found himself either on the ropes, or about to go over a cliff, in the semis. Twice he saved match points to beat Roger Federer in five sets, once he came back from a set down to beat David Ferrer, and last year he was down two sets to one before coming back to catch Stan Wawrinka at the finish line. Put all of those matches together and you could begin to understand why, even when he was down two sets to one and a break in the fourth to Nishikori today, even when he seemed to have nothing left in the tank, the betting odds among some bookmakers still favored Djokovic to win.

This time, though, we waited for Nole in vain. We waited through his slow first-set start; through his stunningly awful, and crucial, third-set tiebreaker, in which he double faulted and made five unforced errors; we even waited while he dragged himself, head hanging, to the brink of defeat in the fourth. Surely, once his back was to the wall and the match essentially lost, he would come out firing winners the way he had so often in the past. Instead, Djokovic went away tamely, and was broken in an error-filled final game. Every time he might have been expected to turn things around, he didn’t.

“Well, what can I say?” a spent and down-looking Djokovic said a few minutes after the match. “Other than the second set, my game today was not even close to what I wanted it to be. A lot of unforced errors, a lot of short balls. Just wasn’t myself.”

It has become a post-Wimbledon theme for Djokovic.

After he lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in similarly uninspired fashion in Toronto last month, the Serb said, “I haven’t played even close to what I intended before going to the court. Just nothing was going. No baseline, no serve, no return.”

After he lost the following week to Tommy Robredo in Cincinnati, Djokovic said, “Many, many, many things are not clicking these two weeks on hard courts. It’s unfortunate, but it’s more than obvious I’m not playing even close to what I’m supposed to play.”

What’s eating Nole? Djokovic couldn’t offer any explanations today. His wife, Jelena, is pregnant, and he said, “Of course I am part of her pregnancy. It’s normal, but, you know, it’s no different for me in terms of preparing for the match and for the tournament. I had all my dedication, everything directed to this U.S. Open. I tried to give my best and I did. Now my best today was not where I wanted it to be.”

Djokovic’s coach, Boris Becker, offered Sky Sports his explanation:

“It’s all down to the fact that he didn’t have any energy left after Wimbledon,” Becker said. “He won the tournament and was No. 1. He got married two weeks later. Give him a break. Mentally he’s a little bit tired.”

Perhaps even Djokovic doesn’t know the reason. But judging by his 2014 season as a whole, it’s still likely to be a blip rather than a longer-running trend.

In January, Djokovic lost 9-7 in the fifth set to Stan Wawrinka in the quarters at the Australian Open, his first defeat before the semis at a major in four years. Two months later, he came to Indian Wells without a title for the first time since 2006. Questions swirled about Nole's form. He said he couldn’t expect to win every five-set match at the majors (he could have said the same about U.S. Open semifinals today). Yet at Indian Wells, Djokovic put an end to his brief drought and went on another tear, winning in Key Biscayne, Rome, and at Wimbledon. This time Djokovic does sound more discouraged than he did then, and I don’t expect him to suddenly run over the field this fall, the way he did in 2013. But he’s had his downs, and then his ups, this year before.

Of course, this match was not just about its loser. Of all the new young and youngish faces we’ve seen have success on tour this season—Dimitrov, Raonic, Gulbis, Kyrgios—Nishikori, 24, is the first to reach a Grand Slam final. He did it by playing a better, sharper, more aggressive, more opportunistic version of the game that Djokovic was throwing at him. The two players had similar winner and error counts, but Nishikori got off to a quicker start, which netted him the first set, and he had the steadier hand in the third-set tiebreaker that essentially decided this match.

While his win was an upset, Nishikori’s performance was hardly a surprise. He’s already beaten Roger Federer this year, and he had Rafael Nadal on the ropes on clay in the Madrid final before having to retire with a back injury. Today he was able to do what few opponents can: Hang in, and win, backhand-to-backhand rallies with Djokovic. We began the Grand Slam season gushing about Wawrinka's one-handed backhand; we're finishing it gushing over Nishikori's two-hander.

“I was ready to play these kind of players always,” Nishikori said. “Especially this year I have [been] playing really well. I went to final in Masters once, and you know, I have been beating those top guys already....I was playing really well and really aggressive, and didn’t wait for the ball. Even [though] the opponent is Novak, I was playing my tennis. Everything worked well today.”

Nishikori had a cyst removed from his right foot before the Open started, and he said today that immediately after the procedure, he wasn’t sure whether he should come to New York to play. The major knock against him in the past was his physical fragility; he’s been sidelined a seemingly infinite number of times over the years, and I had thought of him as more likely to win a Masters event playing two-of-three set, rather than a Slam playing three-of-five. But this tournament has seen the emergence of Kei the Combative. He came back from two sets to one down to beat Milos Raonic at 2:30 in the morning, and followed that with a four-hour, five-set win over Stan Wawrinka.

Even on Saturday, while he was in control most of the way, it took Nishikori nearly three hours to subdue Djokovic in high humidity. Earlier in the tournament Nishikori said that his coach, the always-persistent Michael Chang, has helped make him a tougher player, which is something that seems to have come as a surprise to the easy-going Florida resident.

“I guess I like long matches,” Nishikori said after winning his third straight today, though his crooked smile made it seem like he wasn't so sure.

“He’s tough,” Nishikori said of Chang, “but I sometimes needed, you know, something.”

Like Djokovic in defeat, Nishikori couldn’t quite put his finger on what that something was that helped him to victory today. But it’s put him in the U.S. Open final. We had waited all day for Nole, only to find Kei instead.