“What you did this year is probably impossible to repeat,” Rafael Nadal said to Novak Djokovic after losing to the Serb at the U.S. Open in 2011. These words of hard-won realism—Nadal knew from experience that living up to yourself isn’t easy—have begun to sound prophetic. While Djokovic repeated himself in Melbourne and Key Biscayne and is still a strong No. 1, he has struggled more often than he did in 2011. Today, after losing to Nadal 7-5, 6-3 in the Rome final, he finally gave back a piece of the clay turf that he had taken from Rafa last year.
Just as important, this match looked more like the Djokovic-Nadal tussles we saw from 2008 to 2010 than the Serb-dominated versions of last year. Like those earlier contests, Djokovic controlled much of the action but couldn’t connect on the finishing shot often enough. It reminded me of another comment Rafa made after last year’s Open, when he shook his head and said that Djokovic just kept making "one more ball, one more ball, one more ball." That patience, Nadal said, was the biggest change in his game and the biggest reason he had passed him. Today, with his defense, Nadal asked him again to make one more ball. Djokovic couldn’t do it.
At 2-2, Novak worked himself into position for a putaway overhead, then bounced the smash on his side of the net. Later in the same game, at deuce, he found his old reliable pattern against Rafa—backhands to each corner—but this time he missed the finisher down the line. More crucial, with Nadal serving at 3-4, 30-30 and Novak finding his range—a TV commentator said at that moment, “Djokovic is just beginning to take the ascendancy”—the two played another long point, with Djokovic dictating. In 2011, his signature reaction to an important winner was to let out a long grunt, and he tried it again on a backhand here. This time it was one shot too soon. Nadal stretched for a slice forehand and lofted it back, a ball that would have been red meat for the Djoker last year. Today he sent it 5 feet long. Instead of a long victory grunt, he was left to stare at the clay in confusion. It was one ball too many.
Djokovic pressed, to the tune of 41 unforced errors on the day. As he said afterward, you’ll never beat Rafa on clay with that kind of stat. He tried to force his forehand, was thrown off by weird bounces on his backhand, lost the the long rallies that he has been winning against Nadal, and let his frustration get the better of him when he smashed his racquet at the end of the first set. Even Djokovic’s return wasn’t quite up to its usual standard of brilliance. With Nadal serving at 4-3 in the second set, Djokovic put his first return on the baseline and went up 0-15. But from 15-15, he missed two makeable returns. The second one was a backhand off a second serve that caromed all the way past the doubles sideline. All in all, he looked like the hunted rather than the hunter.
Yet Djokovic can take some heart in the fact that the match was still close, and that he played much of it from an offensive position. Up 5-4 at 30-30 on Nadal’s serve, he hit a forcing forehand that clipped the sideline but was called wide; that might have cost him a chance to reach set point. And early in the second, Djokovic appeared ready to turn the momentum in his favor. He held six break points in Rafa’s first two service games. Nadal, in an echo of their Melbourne final, had begun to nervously miss routine forehands. But this time Djokovic couldn’t convert, and the tide stayed with Rafa. As commentator Robbie Koenig said, it isn’t as if Djokovic has lost the formula for beating Nadal. He just needs to execute it . . . to perfection.
After the match, Djokovic rightly said that, despite the scores, it had been tight, and he can go to Paris knowing he has a chance at the Nole Slam. He also said that Nadal wasn’t at his best. Rafa politely disagreed. “Can I play better?” he asked himself. “Yes. Can I play much more better? I am not that good.”
That’s an accurate assessment. Nadal was very good in general, especially on defense. He went after his forehand early and won a few points by looping it high and deep to Djokovic’s backhand. He not only tracked balls down, which he always does, but he didn’t get tight or hit short once he got there, something he had done more than usual against Djokovic over the last year. Even when getting pushed around, Rafa looked comfortable out there. To combat Djokovic’s deep returns, he seems to have invented a hockey-goalie block to keep himself in the point; it’s a difficult, fast-hands shot, but I don’t think I saw him miss one today. Finally, Nadal won the tennis equivalent of what they call “loose balls” in basketball. When the two players were at net and forced to improvise, Nadal usually came out the winner, including on an all-important break point at 5-5 in the first.
But as both of them said, this wasn’t Nadal at his very best. He didn’t serve well; just 57 percent of his first balls went in. On the plus side, now Nadal knows he can beat Novak without serving lights out, the way he did in Monte Carlo. And he did come up with good deliveries when he needed them, including two big service winners to hold for 4-2 in the second set. On the minus side, Djokovic will likely return the ball more crisply the next time they play. As far as the ground game, Nadal still makes more routine errors with his forehand against Djokovic than he does against anyone else, much the way Roger Federer does when he plays Nadal. Rafa was anxious on that side early in the second set, and he overhit a few forehands down the line that he hadn’t missed the entire clay season.
Speaking of which, the clay swing has been whittled down to one last big event, the one for the record books in Paris. Nadal, with his customary three warm-up wins, two of which came over Djokovic, is now a slight favorite there. He finished this week the way he started, like a man determined to put the negativity from Madrid behind him and begin his final push for Roland Garros. No one knows how to get ready for that event like Nadal. Today Rafa played with a hungry look, the look of a player getting back something that had been taken from him—in this case, both his Rome title and the No. 2 ranking.
It might not have been absolute top-drawer Nadal, but it was a vintage performance in the resourcefulness department. All of his scrambling and sliding paid off at game point at 4-3 in the second set. On that point, Djokovic drilled a forehand that Nadal barely scraped back; then Novak pushed him to his right and came in. Nadal staggered and stumbled but still managed to get his racquet in position for a topspin lob that Djokovic could only wave at in disgust. It was the final dagger, and another moment when Nadal turned seeming defeat into victory. The win made him 247-19 for his career on clay, the best men's winning percentage of the Open era. Persistence, as it has for seven years for him, has paid off again.
