The Phases of Nole and Venus

There’s a look that players get these days when they face Novak Djokovic. The eyes have a little less life in them, the shoulders are a little more slumped, the feet trudge, rather than spring, toward the sidelines on changeovers: “Blank” may be the best way of describing it. It’s as if Djokovic’s opponents don’t want to get their hopes up only to have them ground to smithereens again.

It didn’t take long for Andy Murray to betray the telltale signs of Djokovitis in Paris on Sunday. Despite playing well all week at the BNP Paribas Masters, and despite having beaten Djokovic as recently as August, Murray was slow off the mark in the final. In his second service game, he was a step behind the Djokovic attack and was broken at love. In the next game, Murray swung too far in the other direction, overhitting a pair of easy mid-court forehands that he would normally put away, and trying an early-in-the-rally drop shot that had more than a whiff of desperation about it. Even when Murray won a battle, it hurt him in the war: After persevering through an 11-minute service game to hold for 2-3, Murray lost the next three games and the set.

It’s hard to blame Murray for feeling pessimistic; this 6-2, 6-4 defeat was his 10th loss in 11 meetings against Djokovic, and his sixth in 2015 alone. In three of those, he was able to win a set, but not in Paris. When Murray made his expected second-set run, winning 11 of 14 points and nearly going up a break, Djokovic made sure to snuff it out early. He was determined to avoid a repeat of what had happened the previous day, when Stan Wawrinka came back from a break down in the second set to win it 6-3. (Djokovic won that match going away, 6-3, 3-6, 6-0.) This year, as I’ve written many times before, Djokovic has been willing to bend but not break; on Sunday he didn’t allow himself to bend, either.

From that perspective, you’d have to say Djokovic has only improved since winning the U.S. Open and clinching the year-end No. 1 ranking. Instead of dropping sets and bouncing back, he’s no longer dropping anything. Djokovic has won 30 of the last 31 sets he’s played; the thought of losing one now seems intolerable to him.

“There were a couple of games in the second set where Andy started turning things around,” Djokovic said. “But I managed to stay tough. It was, all in all, the best performance of the week, and it came at the right time.”

Djokovic also appears to have improved against Murray. His straight-sets win in Paris followed an even more one-sided 6-1, 6-3 win over the Brit in Shanghai last month. In the past, their matches have produced long rallies that could border on the tedious. This fall, though, Djokovic has been unwilling to settle for tedium. On Sunday he was relentless in the way he changed direction with the ball and pushed Murray into the alleys with his crosscourt backhand, all without seeming to take on any more risk than normal.

“I think I was very solid from the very first point,” Djokovic said, “very similar to a performance I had against him in Shanghai in terms of intensity and, really, you know, strength in the shots and really protecting the baseline, trying to be the one that dictates play.”

Each week, it seems, we wonder again: Have we reached Peak Nole? Each week he seems to deliver something better. Djokovic himself didn’t shy away from the term in Paris.

“I think there is a few reasons why I have managed to reach my peak at this stage of my career this year," he said. "I think in terms of physical and mental ability, I reached my peak experience-wise, obviously have had a lot of matches that in the past have led me to where I am at this stage.”

Where is he, exactly? Here’s Djokovic by the numbers at the moment. He’s 78-5 in 2015; he has won 10 events, including three majors and a record six Masters titles. He has reached the final of every tournament he has entered since the first one, in Doha, in January. He’s 27-4 against the Top 10.

There may be more Peak Noles to come, but when we look back, what will say it was like to watch the 2015 version? One TV commentator on Sunday called him, as many commentators have called him before, “a machine.” But what struck me most was the variety and surprise in his shot selection. Yes, Djokovic spends most of his time at the baseline, and no, his two-handed backhand doesn’t allow him maximum versatility from that side. But within those parameters, Djokovic rarely hit the same shot twice in a row against Murray.

Does anyone change the direction of the ball more often than Djokovic? He surprised Murray on a number of occasions by snapping it down the line when a crosscourt would have been the conventional play. And within each of his ground strokes, Djokovic has a lot of variation at his command. On Sunday, from the backhand side, he attacked with flat crosscourt angles, defended with high floating slices, hit his service returns deep and down the middle, and used a wide-open stance to dip his crosscourt passing shots at Murray’s feet. From the forehand side, Djokovic curled the ball down the line from the middle of the court, rolled it high and crosscourt, found the most acute angles possible for re-drop winners, and smacked the ball into the corners whenever Murray gave him the chance.

Djokovic is less a machine than a subtle virtuoso of the baseline game. Catch his act, and appreciate it, while you can.

Djokovic wasn’t the only player who spent the weekend winding up a brilliant season.

Coming as it does after the tour's supposed year-end championships, the WTA's Elite Trophy—or the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai, as it's officially known—may be the ultimate example of sponsor-driven tennis-schedule overkill. That fact aside, though, it must be said that in 2015 the event provided us with a happy ending to the women’s year. By taking home the title, 35-year-old Venus Williams returned to the season-ending Top 10. It has been five years since she made her last appearance there, in 2010, and 17 years since she made her first appearance there, in 1998.

Venus is obviously at a different stage in her career than Djokovic. Her first peak, after all, coincided with the turn of the century. But after jumping 12 spots in the year-end rankings between 2014 and 2015, it’s hard to say she’s heading toward retirement, either. We’ve known for a while that even a 30-and-over Venus is dangerous on any given day, but in 2015 she was dangerous on just about every given day. Williams won the first tournament of the year, in Auckland in January, and the last tournament of the year, the Elite Trophy in Zhuhai. If she hadn’t run into her sister at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, it’s possible she would have won the two biggest tournaments of the year as well. A major title for Venus in 2016 no longer sounds like wishful thinking.

It was fun to watch Venus turn back the clock, and trade bomb serves and forehand drives with her sister, at the Open. Fun to watch, and even more fun to do, according to Venus. While many players downshifted after Flushing Meadows, Venus put her foot on the gas. Even after 18 years of the tour grind, she was happy to spend the last two months on the other side of the world from her home, searching for another match, and winning most of them.

“I came into the Asian season just really ready to play,” Venus said on Sunday. “Had a good U.S. Open and felt like I was really playing well...I felt like had momentum coming into the Asian swing, and then just wanted to win, play well, be my best.”

For Venus, even that sounds like it’s just a beginning.

“It’s a great thing to be Top 10 now with the level of my game,” she said, “but I’m still very hungry. I’m ready for more.”

What phase is this Venus in? We can’t say that, at 35, she's on the rise. We can’t say she’s at her peak. But we can’t say she’s in decline, either. So where she is now? Right where she started two decades ago: Blazing new paths in tennis.