Janko Tipsarevic, long a wingman for his illustrous Serbian countryman Novak Djokovic, jumped into the pilot's seat and recorded his second win over the world No. 1 in less than a year. And just like after that earlier win at the ATP World Tour Finals last fall, there was some doubt about Djokovic's fitness as a competitor after this surprising upset at the Madrid Masters.
Still. You don't beat Djokovic without playing extremely well and, more important, you don't beat someone who has that No. 1 aura without showing great grit and poise. The reckoning on that front happened after Djokovic, already down 6-7 (2), 2-5 and serving at 0-40, whacked three consecutive aces to fend off all those match points, then added a service winner and cross-court forehand winner to hold the game.
It was Djokovic's first real threat since the beginning of the first set, and earlier in Tipsarevic's steady rise to the Top 10 it might have been enough to scare him off a straight-sets win. But Tipsarevic, clearly fighting his nerves (the first serve that served him so well suddenly deserted him), managed to ward off three break points in the next game. He then converted his fourth match point (his first of that game) when Djokovic drove his next shot after the return into the net. That ended it, 7-6 (2), 6-3.
If you didn't know better watching this one, you might have thought that Djokovic was suffering from something like sympathy pangs for Rafael Nadal. Djokovic clearly looked uncomfortable as he slid around, shook his head in dismay, stretched his legs as if he might have pulled something late in the first set (we'll see if there's any truth in that). There was something, well, overly dramatic about it all—as if Djokovic was determined not to make the most of what, to him, was an unfortunate situation. As if he wanted to show all of us just how awful that court is.
Nole and Rafa have been the most outspoken critics of the blue clay, and now both of them have left the tournament. Thus, their criticism of the blue clay will be more credible in some quarters, and it has allowed the top two players in the world to stake out something like the moral high ground in this disagreement. After all, how would Djokovic's criticism look if he did nothing but complain about the surface—only to win the event?
By the way, I'm not for a moment suggesting any conscious lack of effort on Djokovic's part. What I am saying is that he's been visibly disgrunted, prone to making gestures of disgust, and obviously something less than fully committed to the obvious mission: Mastering the blue clay and winning the tournament. This was a loss that may sound the death knell for blue clay in Madrid.
Djokovic started well enough today, leaning heavily on his pal and Davis Cup partner in the first two games Tipsarevic served, the second of which went on for over 10 minutes (Djokovic had four break points, none of them converted, in those games). When it finally ended with a backhand let-cord winner off a service return by Tipsarevic, Djokovic uncharacteristically flung his arms in the air in disgust.
However, after struggling to get his first serve into the box in the first few games, Tipsarevic settled in and found his range. It made all the difference in the world because of the speed of the blue clay, and the problems Djokovic seemed to have getting traction, a good push off, and a smooth slide. But that still leaves hanging the question: Why didn't Tipsarevic, or so many of the other competitors, have such obvious problems?
We'll leave that question for next week. The main thing here is that as Tipsarevic's service numbers improved, he found himself holding just as easily as his opponent. On the day, Tipsarevic converted 70 percent of his first serves and won a whopping 79 percent of those points. And because his attitude was that much more positive when he escaped those first two games unscathed, he was able to play a good tiebreaker.
Djokovic double-faulted away the first point of it, after which Tipsarevic hit a neat Nole-style inside-out forehand winner off a service return, and followed on with an ace to go up 3-0. A cross-court backhand that clipped the net and fell out put Djokovic behind 0-4, an enormous deficit that Tipsarevic was able to fully exploit when he held his next two serves for 6-1. After losing the next point, Tipsarevic won the 'breaker when Djokovic flubbed a forehand.
In the second set, the men cruised along much as they had after the start of the first. Djokovic gave up the decisive break serving at 2-3, 30-40, when he made a routine forehand error right down the middle after a brief rally. That was it for him, at least until that surprising resurgence from triple-match point when down 2-5.
Credit Tipservic for quelling that brief insurrection, but keep in mind that this match was as much about more than forehands and backhands.