AO Mens Final: Novak Djokovic v Rafael Nadal

[shawnbm]

Nice to see some posters from months ago—a new year everyone! It will surely be a fascinating one!

 

[Moxie]

That match in Wimbledon was very tied and could have gone to one side or to the other side but Rafa played very bad the last game, too many errors and he paid it very badly. Today has been a very different story, I agree that Novak has played excellent but the match was very far to be a classy, good and competitive like many people were expecting , Nadal played with a very low level helping Novak to look even much better. Maybe he has that some mental scar, maybe but we have to understand that maybe he wasn't ready to play at 100% like Novak was

No, Rafa should have won that match in 4. He fluffed it.

 

[britbox]

just pruned the shoutbox.[/i]

 

[Vince Evert]

i didn't see or care about the final so cannot judge on how poorly Nadal played vs how well Djokovic played as they're my two least favourite tennis players. But one look at the score alone doesn't sound like Nadal we've come to expect. After both players won the SF's real easy, you would expected another 5 setter.
I wanted to raise the questions, did Nadal look effected by lack of big matches (no bigtime tennis since last year U S Open)? Could the lack of a tough grinding match leading into the final also been a telling factor? Or was Novak simply too good and outplayed Nadal and did not give him any breathing room?

 

[atttomole]

i didn't see or care about the final so cannot judge on how poorly Nadal played vs how well Djokovic played as they're my two least favourite tennis players. But one look at the score alone doesn't sound like Nadal we've come to expect. After both players won the SF's real easy, you would expected another 5 setter.
I wanted to raise the questions, did Nadal look effected by lack of big matches (no bigtime tennis since last year U S Open)? Could the lack of a tough grinding match leading into the final also been a telling factor? Or was Novak simply too good and outplayed Nadal and did not give him any breathing room?

Djokovic was terrific yesterday. I think he went through 4 service games or more without dropping a point in the first set. And his return of serve was amazing as usual. Combine those two, and you have a rout. The scoreline seems a bit flattering to Nadal, I think.

 

[Nadalfan2013]

i didn't see or care about the final so cannot judge on how poorly Nadal played vs how well Djokovic played as they're my two least favourite tennis players. But one look at the score alone doesn't sound like Nadal we've come to expect. After both players won the SF's real easy, you would expected another 5 setter.
I wanted to raise the questions, did Nadal look effected by lack of big matches (no bigtime tennis since last year U S Open)? Could the lack of a tough grinding match leading into the final also been a telling factor? Or was Novak simply too good and outplayed Nadal and did not give him any breathing room?

Nadal tanked the match to save the lives of many Federer fans who would have otherwise commited suicide. Very nice of him.

 

[Vince Evert]

Nadal tanked the match to save the lives of many Federer fans who would have otherwise commited suicide. Very nice of him.

LOL i reckon he was bribed. Another tennis match being fixed.

 

[Vince Evert]

Djokovic was terrific yesterday. I think he went through 4 service games or more without dropping a point in the first set. And his return of serve was amazing as usual. Combine those two, and you have a rout. The scoreline seems a bit flattering to Nadal, I think.

Sounds like the match against Shapalov in the 4 round may have played him into form. He just got better after being taken to four sets by the Russian.

 

[Jelenafan]

Could the lack of a tough grinding match leading into the final also been a telling factor? Or was Novak simply too good and outplayed Nadal and did not give him any breathing room?

Novak was incredibly sharp and focus from the first point. I thought Nadal was tense/ tight as early in the match he was even missing on his 2nd serve return of serves, couldn’t get the ball in play.

However in this particular day, it didn’t matter. Novak was in the zone on his absolute best surface. Nobody was going to beat him.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Hey! @Chris Koziarz Could you explain to me what all this html means, please?

These are XML tags that are not understood by this website. Normally, a tag <blockquote /> is used to mark the quote from another post (such as a quote of your question hereabove), however Mile pasted in his/er quote incorrectly (perhaps by copying and pasting XML source from another website), users are not supposed to do it that way but rather to use the RTF editor of this website. This website did not know how to process the sequence of tags pasted by Mile so fell back to display pasted content as plain text. It did know how to display the tweet itself, because the tweet in question was in a form of a simple link that I reproduced below (d-click to see it):
"https://s9e.github.io/iframe/twitter.min.html#1088973702841024512"
The text surrounding the tweet are formatting tags that an unknown source website understands but a garbage for this website.

 

[Ricardo]

Novak was incredibly sharp and focus from the first point. I thought Nadal was tense/ tight as early in the match he was even missing on his 2nd serve return of serves, couldn’t get the ball in play.

However in this particular day, it didn’t matter. Novak was in the zone on his absolute best surface. Nobody was going to beat him.

bs, looking good vs bad Nadal just doesn’t show much. He has looked better before yet got outplayed, it depends on the opposition.

 

[Horsa]

These are XML tags that are not understood by this website. Normally, a tag <blockquote /> is used to mark the quote from another post (such as a quote of your question hereabove), however Mile pasted in his/er quote incorrectly (perhaps by copying and pasting XML source from another website), users are not supposed to do it that way but rather to use the RTF editor of this website. This website did not know how to process the sequence of tags pasted by Mile so fell back to display pasted content as plain text. It did know how to display the tweet itself, because the tweet in question was in a form of a simple link that I reproduced below (d-click to see it):
"https://s9e.github.io/iframe/twitter.min.html#1088973702841024512"
The text surrounding the tweet are formatting tags that an unknown source website understands but a garbage for this website.

Thank you very much for the information. I knew about the tags but what exactly do the tags mean. What is XML? I haven't heard of it. You know I feel the need to try to understand everything I come across.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Thank you very much for the information. I knew about the tags but what exactly do the tags mean. What is XML? I haven't heard of it. You know I feel the need to try to understand everything I come across.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) as the name suggests is an extension to HTML. Roughly speaking, it can contain any tags you come up with, e.g. <Curious_Horsa "Everything must be understood" /Curious_Horsa>
Only a specific application (and not the generic web browser) can understand a custom XML tags, such as the one I invented above. <blockquote /> tag was not part of original html. So we can say it's an XML tag. I'm not sure if it's correct anymore because as HTML standards mature, they may be extended and more tags are added to it.

 

[Horsa]

XML (Extensible Markup Language) as the name suggests is an extension to HTML. Roughly speaking, it can contain any tags you come up with, e.g. <Curious_Horsa "Everything must be understood" /Curious_Horsa>
Only a specific application (and not the generic web browser) can understand a custom XML tags, such as the one I invented above. <blockquote /> tag was not part of original html. So we can say it's an XML tag. I'm not sure if it's correct anymore because as HTML standards mature, they may be extended and more tags are added to it.

O.K. Thank you very much for your information. In that case then I don't have to understand it just the contents within & it only showed up because a mistake was made.

 

[luvsports!]

DO you agree?
https://www.theroar.com.au/2019/01/28/the-day-that-rafael-nadal-looked-slow-and-old/

 

[DarthFed]

Djokovic was terrific yesterday. I think he went through 4 service games or more without dropping a point in the first set. And his return of serve was amazing as usual. Combine those two, and you have a rout. The scoreline seems a bit flattering to Nadal, I think.

Yeah the score actually made it look closer than it was. Total points were 89-53, that's all you really need to know right there.

 

[Federberg]

bs, looking good vs bad Nadal just doesn’t show much. He has looked better before yet got outplayed, it depends on the opposition.

Thank you! I just don't get this linear thinking that because player A looks good against player B, it means they would do the same to player C. That's simply not what happens in sports. Match ups matter

 

[Federberg]

oh my stars, listening to the tennis podcast and they're speculating about whether Rafa was injured. Why can't it be as simple as what we saw. Rafa couldn't handle this version of Djokovic? I don't think Rafa is quite as quick as he used to be anyway.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

DO you agree?
https://www.theroar.com.au/2019/01/28/the-day-that-rafael-nadal-looked-slow-and-old/

In principle, yes. But it's worth pointing out Joker is not the first player who subdued Nad by playing agressive and taking his balls early on the rise. Fed did exactly the same exactly 2 years ago. We talked about Fed's improved aggressive backhand, that won him AO 2017 title. Then, Fed confirmed his adjustment of style worked against Nad game by beating Nad 5 times in a row, the feat he never achieved in his prime. I think Joker will achieve the same in his H2H vs. Nad if he continues playing that aggressive style at his current level. With one exception: I expect Nad to win on clay, because clay surface suits Nad game better than hard/grass so Joker/Fed agression will be neutralised by the surface. We cannot expect them to have "soderling moment" and blow Nad off his royal surface, which is very unlikely.
The remarkable difference between Jokers today & Fed 2 years ago, is that Fed won the hard way in 5 while Joker blew Nad away. I don't think it is an indication of Nad's decline but rather how well Joker was playing in this final. Probably as well as ever when he was virtually unbeatable. But such level cannot be sustained forever and eventually Joker's form will dip. But even with his form dipped slightly, he can still beat Nad just like Fed in AO 2017. I think those Big2 finally found the recipe how to deal with Nad's game on hard court. Others did not, because there is a large skill gap between Big3 and rest of the pack. But the big2 did not figure out how to deal with Nad on clay where Nad remains undisputed King with Joker trailing and Fed fallen into oblivion because Fed stopped playing that surface altogether.

 

[shawnbm]

Rafa would say if he were hurt. He wasn’t—he just did not get tested enough and run enough in the lead up to squaring off against Nole. Novak came out like a caged tiger, ready to pounce. I foo question if Rafa might be just a tad slower moving laterally, but you gotta dance with who ya brung. All kudos to the Serbian Slayer—he lives up to the nickname in a big way.