Dealing With the Atmosphere

It’s the tennis-world mystery of the week: Why can’t Novak Djokovic win the Western & Southern Open? He has titles at each of the other eight Masters 1000 events, and he has won the other three that are played on North American hard courts—Indian Wells, Miami, Canada—at least three times apiece. While Djokovic has hardly been a disaster in Cincinnati—he’s made the final four times in 10 appearances—the event remains a puzzling omission on his résumé, his Masters-level version of the French Open. On Thursday, though, Djokovic may have given us a clue to his Cincy puzzle, and it’s one that might also explain his recent struggles at the next tournament, in New York.

Despite weighing just a buck-fifty, 14th-ranked David Goffin bossed Djokovic around for the better part of an hour in their third-round match. It was the Belgian, rather than the Serb, who stepped forward with confidence and changed the direction of the ball. It was the Serb, not the Belgian, who was hesitant and frustrated. When Goffin detonated two down-the-line backhands to go up 3-0—and a double break—in the third, Djokovic directed a long tirade, complete with hand gestures, toward his player’s box.

Whatever he was trying to say, he got his own message, because he won the next six games.

“I managed to wake myself up,” Djokovic told ESPN afterward, “and hitting with a little more intensity and aggressiveness on the court and that helped.”

All of this may be no cause for alarm. A hiccup along the way to ultimate victory, as we know, has been the Djokovic M.O. all season. Last week he survived an even bigger early crisis in Montreal, when he was forced to save two match points against Ernests Gulbis. And last summer in Cincy, when Djokovic went flat as a pancake against Tommy Robredo, he stayed flat and lost in straight sets. This time, while it took a self-directed tongue-lashing to do it, he forced himself out of his funk.

Yet Djokovic went on to admit that it had been more than Goffin who was bothering him.

“Very tough conditions to play,” Djokovic said, “very frustrating to me. Tough because of the wind and just generally in Cincinnati it’s not easy to control the ball. You gotta make that extra step. Find adjustment steps before you hit the ball.”

You know where it’s also windy? Arthur Ashe Stadium during the first week of September. The wind swirls at the bottom of that huge bowl, and it has taken a couple of Djokovic’s potential U.S. Open titles with it. In the 2012 final, Andy Murray won the first two sets by sitting back and letting Djokovic try to attack through the gusts. Last year, in his semifinal with Kei Nishikori, it was Nishikori’s ground strokes that knifed through the wind more successfully.

“I think he just played better in these conditions than I did,” Djokovic said that day. “I just wasn’t managing to go through the ball in the court. You know, I wasn’t in the balance.”

You don’t win 658 career matches without knowing how to play in the wind. And after the 2011 U.S. Open final, Djokovic was specifically credited by the New York Times for a "keen use of the wind" in his win over Rafael Nadal. But Djokovic can be bothered by it. As I said, he’s never won in Cincy, and despite having so much success at the U.S. Open, he’s only won it once.

Maybe, like he says, Djokovic is used to using his flexibility, rather than extra adjustment steps, to prepare for a shot. Maybe the wind plays havoc with his patient point construction. Maybe it just gets under his skin. Or maybe, most of the time, he’s fine in the wind, and we just notice when he happens to have a bad day.

The only thing we do know is that it’s going to be breezy in New York.

Wind will make a tennis player feel sick, but a loss of aura can be fatal. The word "aura" sounds vague, but it’s real. When players begin to believe they can beat you more often, they’re going to beat you more often.

That, more than anything else, is what led to Rafael Nadal’s 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (3) loss to his countryman Feliciano Lopez on Thursday night. Nadal didn’t play perfectly, but he did play at a level that, under past circumstances, would have been enough to earn him a win in this match. He won a tight first set, something that in the past has usually led to him winning a not-so-tight second one. And even though Rafa wasn't broken in the final set, he still lost it.

“I was there during the whole match with the right intensity,” Nadal said, “with the right attitude, doing the things that I have to do, trying to be more aggressive, trying to go to the net more often. But today I played an opponent that he played a fantastic match, I think. He played the best match ever against me, without a doubt. For me it’s a tough loss because I was playing better and my feelings on the court were better than they were before.”

Lopez had won their previous meeting, last year in Shanghai, and he obviously hadn’t forgotten that fact. In Cincy, he competed with Rafa on level terms, and never gave off the sense, as he has before, that it was going to end badly for him. It was Lopez, for example, who came up with the shot of the match, a slingshot crosscourt forehand winner in the waning moments that Nadal could only watch. It was Lopez who moved exceptionally well and seemed to read Rafa’s every idea. And it was Lopez who clamped down with his serve when it mattered most, in the third-set tiebreaker.

“It means a lot when you play such a good player like him,” Feli said. “It’s not a normal match. It’s something different and the atmosphere there when you play against Rafa, it’s always something special.”

“I think he’s playing better, getting better and better. He played good today. I mean, I was playing really my best today. Doesn’t matter how he played because I was playing so good today.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone, let alone Feliciano Lopez, saying that last sentence after a match against Rafael Nadal two years ago, or five years ago, or 10 years ago. But it’s believable now.

At Wimbledon this year, Dustin Brown knew he could beat Nadal because he had seen three other guys—Lukas Rosol, Steve Darcis, Nick Kyrgios—do it by throwing caution to the wind on Centre Court. In Montreal, Nishikori knew he could beat Nadal by playing a slightly elevated and riskier version of his normal game, because he was so close to doing it in Madrid last year before he hurt himself. And Feli knew he could beat his friend Rafa because he had done it last fall. As with the law, precedent is everything in tennis.

But if Rafa sees more and more precedents going against him these days, he could still find a hopeful one in Cincinnati last night. After he walked off a loser, Roger Federer walked on and made quick, imperious work of Kevin Anderson, 6-1, 6-1. Two years ago, Federer was in Rafa's position: He lost a lot of matches, and to some he appeared to be in terminal decline.

Since then, he has proven that auras may go, but they can come back, too.