Punching Back

Has a tennis player ever said that he likes the fact that Wimbledon follows so hard on the heels of the French Open? For decades, pros and fans and supporters of sane scheduling have wished for more than two paltry weeks between these very different major tournaments. Yet as soon as we get that wish and Wimbledon moves back a week, along comes Novak Djokovic to make a strong case that the events are just fine the way they are. Couldn’t be better, really, as far as he’s concerned.

“I think it’s actually great that after a couple of weeks we have another Slam,” Djokovic told ESPN on Sunday. “It’s very good because you get back in the competitive mode right away. If we don’t have a major right after [Roland Garros], I don’t know how I would definitely feel. Wimbledon takes the best out of me and makes me very committed, very professional.”

It’s hard to say whether any other player shares, or will ever share, Djokovic’s enthusiasm for the blink-of-an-eye turnaround from clay to grass. But maybe that’s because so few of them could ever hope to do what he did for the second straight year on Sunday: Shake off the memory of a bitter defeat in the French Open final by bouncing back to beat Roger Federer for the Wimbledon title a little more than a month later. Not only that, but Djokovic is getting better at this trick as he goes. In 2014, he edged Federer in a five-set thriller; today, aside from squandering seven set points in the second set, he was largely in control during his 7-6 (1), 6-7 (10), 6-4, 6-3 win.

The most important question coming into this match, many of us believed, was whether Federer could keep up the serving heroics that had helped him soar through his semifinal against Andy Murray, and that led many to make him the favorite to do the same against Djokovic. Over the course of the fortnight, Federer had been broken just once. If he could take the racquet out of Djokovic’s hand the way he had Murray’s, even the world No. 1 would have a tough time finding an answer.

Yet by the end of the final, it was clear that the real difference in this match hadn’t been Federer’s serve, it had been Djokovic’s. The Serb always talks about the importance of serving well when he faces Federer, and today it was clear why. It’s perhaps the one area, along with the volley, where Federer normally has an edge on Djokovic.

This time, from a statistical perspective, Djokovic’s serve matched Federer’s across the board: Federer hit 14 aces, Djokovic 13; Federer made 67 percent of first serves, Djokovic 66 percent; both won 74 percent of points on their first serves. Where the stats weren’t close was on second-serve points won. There Djokovic won 60 percent, Federer 49. When a rally began, or when Djokovic could put a good swing on a return, he was the better player.

We’ve grown used to Federer erasing break points—and, in last year’s final, a match point—by raining down clutch serves. Today it was Djokovic who set the tone by saving two set points at 5-6 in the first set with back-to-back service winners. And in the fourth set, when Djokovic was up 4-3 and approaching the finish line, he dug himself out of a 0-30 hole with two more service winners. Other than one slip-up early in the first set, it was Djokovic, rather than Federer, who proved impossible to break.

On Friday, Federer had appeared to float across the grass. He chased back the years as he chased down Murray’s shots. On Sunday his feet looked stuck in that same grass. He hesitated to move in at times, and rarely ran around to take a crack at his forehand on Djokovic’s second serve. He even failed to move all the way up for a few routine forehands and netted them.

Down the stretch, Federer put himself in a hole with loose errors early in games, and in the fourth set there was a sense of resignation to his demeanor, and an indecisiveness about his game. Against Murray, after saving a break point in the opening game, Federer was able to “start rolling” on his serve, as he put it. Djokovic never let that roll get started. When Federer broke in the first set, Djokovic broke right back.

If the match had a crucial moment, when things swung and never swung back, it came at the start of the third set. Federer had just pulled off a miraculous comeback to win the second-set tiebreaker. It had brought the crowd to its feet, turned the stadium on its head, and sent Djokovic into a fit of shirt-tearing, shoe-bashing rage. Early in the third, Federer saved break points at 0-0, earned a break point on Djokovic’s serve at 1-0, and went up 40-15 at 1-1. Then Federer suddenly lost lost four straight points, the last one on a forehand that landed 10 feet long. It was a minute-long lull that he would regret.

“I should not miss,” Federer said of that forehand, and that game. “But that was a different atmosphere then. Also from the crowd, clearly, everything went into the tiebreaker...Definitely a few games where it was close for both guys and maybe, at the end, the key of the match.”

For his part, Djokovic would never trail again.

“I managed to regroup,” Djokovic said, “especially in the rain delay, and that’s where I got my thoughts together and went back to basics.”

“Keep on punching,” Djokovic said his coach, Boris Becker, told him as he waited to return to the court.

Federer looked devastated as he muttered to himself in the moments after the match, but his face was brave and his words steady and relatively positive in his interviews later. Was it a good fortnight or a disappointing one? He sounded torn between runner-up narratives.

“Still think I had a great tournament,” Federer said. “You can have good tournaments without winning. But of course you walk away empty-handed. For me a finalist trophy is not the same. Everybody knows that.”

In many ways, Federer at 33 only shows his age when he tries to cross the finish line at the majors. He’s ranked No. 2 in the world, he just destroyed the world No. 3, yet he’s won only one Slam in the last five years, and none in the last three.

“I’m not going to accept losing and say it’s normal,” Federer said.

Yet at the same time he admitted that coming up short against this particular player wasn’t exactly a let’s-hang-up-the-racquets-right-now disaster.

“He’s the world No. 1 at the moment,” Federer said of Djokovic, “so he’s a guy you can lose to.”

And that was a big difference between this match and the semifinal for Federer. Yes, Djokovic has a better return, a better second serve, and a better all-around game than the Scot. But Federer never played with the same sense of ease and self-belief that he did in the semis. He was pinned down by Djokovic not just physically, but mentally as well.

Aside from Federer’s serve, another variable coming into this final had been the crowd. We knew they would be rabidly pro-Federer, but we didn’t know what that would do to Djokovic. Two years ago, he let a pro-Murray audience affect him in the final, but last year he had blocked out a pro-Federer crowd. This year, Djokovic used the road-game atmosphere to his advantage.

After blowing the second set and listening to the audience’s roar through the changeover, Djokovic hit with more vehemence in the opening games of the third. Later, in the fourth set, he became annoyed at a fan for making noise while he was serving. After winning a crucial point, Djokovic screamed in the fan’s direction. This was a stage of the match when he might otherwise have grown tight with nerves; instead, he used his anger to keep himself emotionally aggressive. And when it was over, Djokovic, instead of looking immediately to his player’s box, circled the court and pumped his fists at the crowd. It was a moment of defiance and satisfaction; the match was over, but Djokovic was still punching.

On Sunday morning, an editorial in London’s Daily Mail had opined that “real sports fans” were rooting for Federer and his last-hurrah narrative. But Djokovic’s narrative had its own appeal. In Paris, he was the tennis equivalent of the top Olympic hurdler who trips on the final bar. Now, just a month later, he was standing on top of the medal stand in London. Djokovic continues to be tennis’s rubber-band man, the guy who bends himself out of shape, but ultimately bounces back into place. That place, for now and the foreseeable future, is No. 1.

“If there is one thing I learned in this sport,” Djokovic said, “it’s to recover fast, to leave things behind and move on.”

“You come here and feel the importance of this event; you can’t think about what happened at the French Open.”

In other words, Wimbledon, don’t even think about moving back another week.