Great servers have great tosses. When Feliciano Lopez is serving well, he lifts the ball into the air—and then the sphere seemingly waits for him to hit it. It makes his first serves, which can reach speeds over 140 m.p.h., look even more imposing. From stasis to speed in a second.
When Lopez isn't serving well, he looks like he's doing too much, flailing forward to try and catch up with his toss. He sometimes experiences patches of this; his first serve becomes an almost automatic fault.
Today, against Novak Djokovic, Lopez was somewhere in between these extremes. I noticed both service motions at times during his 6-3, 2-6, 6-4 loss to the Australian Open champion. He was nearly out-aced by Djokovic (Lopez finished with seven, Djokovic six), who not long ago experienced tremendous problems with his serve and still double-faults more than most elite players. In all, Lopez won just 49% of his first-serve points. It was enough to earn him a set today, but to beat a player of Djokovic's caliber, Lopez needs to win more points off his first strike, not during rallies, where this match was decided.
Djokovic's strength has always been his versatility off the ground—he has every shot, and can make his opponents hit every shot, even if they don't want to. That's what he did in the first set against Lopez, who has always been unwilling to hit through his backhand, instead relying on a safe if not beautiful one-handed slice to keep rallies going. But an on-form Djokovic will simply reply with something else, often a cross-court stroke that got Lopez on the move. These kinds of patterns mostly resulted in a point to Djokovic, and the opening set quickly tilted in his favor.
Coming out of his comfort zone a bit more, Lopez took a 3-0 lead in the second set after some uncharacteristically explosive backhands. Djokovic helped his cause with errors of his own, but it was a convincing set victory. The Spaniard couldn't keep it up, though, and was broken immediately to start the third set. Lopez recovered, breaking to even the final set at 3-all, but was then broken himself. Djokovic was inconsistent at times, but in command overall. Lopez was consistent at times, but never in command.
—Ed McGrogan