As we saw in the final, from a skills perspective, the sky is the limit for the Russian. Davydenko put on a display of epic efficiency against Nadal. His basic tactic was to push Rafa wide to his backhand side with sharp-angled forehands. What was surprising was how he set this dynamic up seemingly at will. Davydenko moved inside the court, took the ball on the rise but added extra topspin for margin, and forced Nadal to slice back defensive one-handed backhands until the rest of the court was wide open for a down the line winner. For most of the match, it was a startlingly easy strategy to execute, and I would say that future opponents of Nadal should study a tape of it. At the same time, though, this was Rafa at his most reactive and powerless. I watched these two play live in Rome two years ago, and Nadal was in the same rut—he hit short and loopy and constantly gave Daydenko the initiative. But that match was on clay, and Nadal found his offensive groove just in time to escape with a three-set win. This time he was on a hard court, and there was no escape. Nadal rarely ran around his backhand—when he finally did, in the next to last game, it was a revelation: “Oh, yeah, Rafa really is fast enough to do that. Why didn’t he bother to try it a little earlier?” But it was too late for him to generate any momentum, especially the way Davydenko was knocking off any shot that Nadal left hanging in the middle of the court.
The point of this final wasn’t Nadal, though. He tends to suffer losses like these in the fall, when a little of his competitive edge is rubbed off—remember the way David Nalbandian dismantled him in the Paris final two years ago? Nadal came back and had a pretty decent 2008. No, the point of this match was Davydenko and his partially wasted potential. Last week, to illustrate the difficulty in drawing up a schedule that works for everyone, I drew a contrast between the very top players, the Federers, Nadals, Murrays, and Djokovics, with the next tier, the Robredos and Stepaneks and Tsongas and Simons of the world. The former regularly make the finals of events and are always in contention at majors, so they ration their tournament appearances. The latter make their living by playing week in, week out; they almost never challenge for Slam titles. Davydenko is the reigning king of the second group, but he has the game to join the big boys. The Russian, who has joked that he has to play so much tennis because his wife loves to shop—actually, I doubt he’s completely joking there—enters a tournament every week that he can. If he could enter two tournaments per week, he might try it. He’s been busier than ever over the last six months, in part because he was out with an injury early in the season. Davydenko played three clay-court events after Wimbledon, and he has happily feasted on the injured fields in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and Shanghai this fall. Along the way, Davydenko has also sharpened his underrated skill with a dry one-liner. Talking about his chances at the upcoming World Tour Final in London, he said, “Maybe I have more chance [there]. Maybe everybody will retire and I can win London!” Talking about what he loves most about taking home titles, he said, “I don’t care about the publicity, but I love the money.”
Of course, he’s not really joking with that last line. Davydenko obviously loves to win, and it’s refreshing to see a guy support the tour with such zest. His post-title celebrations are always infectiously enthusiastic, and yesterday he ran over to plant a kiss on his tearful wife in the stands (maybe she was imagining herself at a Louis Vuitton store with the $600,000 winner’s check, who knows). But Davydenko plays for money, not glory. This isn’t a sin—I work for money, too (except on the Internet, but whatever, this is where the glory is). The problem is, this slight and wiry man has never conceived of himself as anything so grand as a Grand Slam champion, and thus has never dedicated himself to winning them. For example, rather than rest and practice during the week before the U.S. Open this year, the way most of the Top 10 did, he opted to play his sixth post-Wimbledon event, a third-tier tournament in New Haven worth 250 ranking points. He then had to retire—a regular occurrence with Davydenko—against Robin Soderling in the round of 16 at the Open. No worries, though, there’s always next week for the Russian. He was back in action by the end of the month, at another 250 in Kuala Lumpur, where he won the title.
Davydenko is 28 now. He’s won three Masters titles, reached four Slam semis, and taken down everyone but Federer. He isn’t a moody headcase like Nalbandian, and he hits and moves at least as cleanly as someone like Murray, who has dedicated his life to winning a major. Isn’t 2010 the moment when Davydenko should show a little more confidence in himself, put a little more of himself on the line, by seriously throwing his energy into the majors rather than finding more 250s to scarf up? On the one hand, time is running out on his Grand Slam chances (very few players have won their first at such an advanced tennis age), and his serve will never be the bail-out weapon that Slam-winning regulars like Sampras and Federer own. On the other hand, he has the all around game, the right mix of speed and pace, to go all the way, even if it involves having to beat Federer for the first time in his career (he's an absurd 0-12 against him). Djokovic and del Potro, both of whom have defeated the world No. 1 on their way to winning majors, are not so far out of the Russian's league that he can’t imagine matching their achievements.
It would require a drastic reversal of his mindset and habits. The Top 4 guys contend at the big events not just because they happen to be the most talented players around. They also do it by organizing their schedules around those events, by not playing every week of the year. Yes, they make up for the lost cash in the endorsements they get, endorsements that have famously eluded the Russian. But if Federer or Nadal lose at a Slam, it kills them. The question is, Does Davydenko have the courage to adopt that attitude?
It wouldn’t just be Davydenko and his wife's wardrobe that would benefit. The sport’s fans would as well. While he wins with efficiency—his older brother turned him into a virtual tennis-practicing robot as a kid—it is nevertheless a poetic efficiency. Davydenko may not be outwardly charismatic, unless you like your tennis players to look like villains from American Cold War movies, but anyone who plays the sport can appreciate what he does. Watch the way he springs forward and, with just a couple quick and sure steps, cuts off the angle on his ground strokes. Check out the set-up and balance on his forehand. See him hit with accuracy and power to all four corners of the court. And marvel at the pragmatic flair with which he carves around a backhand volley for a winner. Davydenko is all business, but there's nothing brutal or mindnumbing about watching him go about it.
Like I said, he’s got a dry cool wit, too. Here’s Davydenko’s assessment of his win over Djokovic in the semis in Shanghai: “I was lucky, he was lucky. In the tiebreak, I was more lucky.” Unfortunately, that’s not the way most Grand Slam champions think or talk. I don’t know about you, though, but I’d love to hear him take the mike on the trophy stand in Melbourne or Paris next year and tell the world that he finally won a Grand Slam title because he was “more lucky” than his opponent. I think he'd love to say it as well. It's time for him to try to make it happen. After all, the majors aren't all about glory. They come with a lot of money, too.