20 for 20: No. 12, Djokovic d. Nadal, 2012 Australian Open

Last year, for the 50th anniversary of TENNIS Magazine, we focused on the past. Given the tome of stories we’d told, and the trove of players and matches we’d witnessed over the past half-century, it was only natural to look back.

And it was comical to even consider doing something similar this year, for the 20th anniversary of TENNIS.com. So we’re taking the opposite approach, and instead focusing on the future. All throughout the week, we’ll be talking about what’s next for the sport, the website and much more.

It wouldn’t be an anniversary, though, without a countdown. But how do you count down events that haven’t yet happened? By predicting what will come to be.

With that said, we present TENNIS.com’s 20 for 20: Twenty matches that we’ll still be talking about twenty years from now. We’ve restricted this list to matches that have taken place in the last 10 years—or, as 20 for 20 author Steve Tignor has put it, “The Golden Decade.” (If you haven’t read our 50th Anniversary Moments or Tournament of Champions, also written by Steve, I implore you to do so.)

It has been a bountiful time for tennis since TENNIS.com’s inception, and it’s anyone’s guess what the next 20 years will bring. But we believe that each of these matches will sustain the test of time.—Ed McGrogan, Senior Editor

“It was obvious on the court for everybody who has watched the match that both of us, physically, we took the last drop of energy that we had from our bodies,” Novak Djokovic said at 2:00 A.M. in Melbourne, when the 2012 Aussie Open men’s final had finally come to an end. “We made history tonight and unfortunately there couldn’t be two winners.”

History, in this case, had been hard-earned. Djokovic and Rafael Nadal had played, at 5 hours and 53 minutes, the longest Grand Slam final of the Open era and the longest singles match in Australian Open history. They had begun a little before 8 P.M. on a Sunday evening and finished at 1:37 Monday morning. Djokovic and Nadal were so spent when it was over that neither of them could stand during the trophy ceremony. When they started to double over, chairs were hurried out to them. It was amazing they had lasted that long.

This was the third straight Grand Slam final between Djokovic and Nadal. The Serb had won in four sets at Wimbledon and at the U.S. Open the previous year; on this night the Spaniard was determined not to suffer a third straight defeat. He willed himself back into the match in the fourth set, and when he won it in a tiebreaker, he dropped to his knees as if he had won the match. Four games later, it looked as if he was on his way. Nadal broke Djokovic to go up 4-2 in the fifth set, and at 30-15 on his serve he had a wide open backhand pass. But he pushed it into the alley, and the momentum swung permanently back to Djokovic, who won five of the last six games for his third Aussie Open title.

“Good morning, everybody,” Nadal said with a smile to the crowd afterward. “This one was very special. I really understand that was a really special match, and probably a match that’s going to be in my mind not because I lost, no, but because the way that we played.”

Djokovic and Nadal would go on to play more finals and classics, but this one encapsulated their rivalry, as well as the brilliance and excess of their era. It was tennis at its most physically grueling, a 15-round fight and a marathon all in one. But was it a little too much of a good thing? Not only were there a lot of points in this match, the players took a lot of time in between them. Soon after, the men’s tour began to crack down, with varying degrees of success, on slow play.

Will we ever have another six-hour final? Many players and fans—not to mention chair umpires and ball kids—may hope the answer is no. If not, Djokovic-Nadal will stand as a monument to the quality, and the quantity, of its times.