“Disrupt” is an overused word these days, but it’s the best one to use if you’re trying to describe what Stan Wawrinka must do to have a chance of beating top seed Novak Djokovic in the French Open final. Wawrinka has to “play heavy,” as he likes to say, and keep Djokovic from settling back and making this a match of attrition.
It might be the toughest thing to do in tennis right now. Djokovic is at the peak of his considerable powers. He’s No. 1 by nearly 5,000 ranking points. He’s won his last 27 matches and is 16-0 on clay this season. He’s coming off wins over Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray in his last two rounds. And, last but not least, he’s 17-3 against Wawrinka. Beating Djokovic essentially requires redlining your game for three full sets. Murray dug deeply in the semis, and came up with some best tennis of his career, yet still lost 6-1 in the fifth.
For Stan and his fans, there is some good news: Wawrinka is one of the few players who can redline for a long period of time, and who can disrupt Djokovic from the baseline. He can generate point-killing power from all parts of the court, and he doesn’t need pace from his opponent to do it. And despite the lopsided head-to-head record, it has worked against Djokovic. Their last four matches at Grand Slams have gone the full five sets. Djokovic won three of them, but two of those victories were very tight.
On clay it’s a somewhat different story. They haven’t played on the surface since 2012, but Djokovic has won all five meetings, and dropped just two sets in the process. Until the latter half of his semi against Murray, Djokovic was also looking exceedingly comfortable at Roland Garros. The Serb loves to play sliding defense on hard courts; clay just makes it that much easier for him to track everything down and get back into position.
In his quarterfinal against Federer, Wawrinka showed that he can sustain a high level of hitting. In his semifinal against Tsonga, he showed that even when his level dips, he can raise it when needed; he used his serve to save 16 of 17 break points, and he found the right shots at the right moments to steal off with the crucial third-set tiebreaker. Wawrinka served well in both of those matches, and he won’t beat Djokovic if that shot isn’t clicking again.
Wawrinka also started well against Federer and Tsonga, and history says he might do the same against Djokovic. In their four recent Slam five-setters, he won the first sets in three of them, 6-1, 6-2, and 6-2. Even if Wawrinka doesn’t win the opener this time, Djokovic's recent history says that his opponent will have a chance at some point in this match. To quote a conversation between two Eurosport commentators who were calling his match with Murray:
“Djokovic is like a surgeon.”
“Yes, but I wonder if his coach, Boris Becker, wishes he didn’t need quite so many cuts to finish the operation.”
Yet history, both recent and long-term, says that Djokovic will win. He has eight major titles to Wawrinka’s one, and he has been the world's second-best clay-courter for the better part of the last five seasons. Wawrinka will almost certainly create turbulence in Djokovic’s flight to his long-awaited first title at Roland Garros, but nobody is better at landing a tennis match than the world No. 1.
Winner: Novak Djokovic