nehmeth said:
federberg said:
I think the scoreline flattered Novak. After he bailed in the 2nd set the thing was over apart from token resistance. That was my own personal feeling anyway. I confess I lost interest. I spent more time watching a Magnus Carlsen match on my computer than the last 2 sets!
Co-signed.
Finally tapped into my inner masochist and forced myself to watch the whole match. To me, it was pretty obvious that instead of stepping it up in the 2nd set, he became tentative, passive, diffident - almost as though he was waiting for Ralf to make his move instead of pressing the battle. It was over after the 2nd set.
That's the problem when you take a set without playing great, and without your opponent playing great. Something similar happened to Nadal in Rome (although not exactly the same): He won the first set without really doing anything special, and when Novak stepped up his game, Nadal had no answer.
Now, admittedly, Novak stepped up his game in Rome far more than Nadal did yesterday, but the dynamic is similar: You won a set, and it was surprisingly easy. You have to assume that it won't be as easy in the second, and be ready for that by pushing your foot on the gas even more. There was no way Nadal was going to play as tentative as he did in the first set, so Djokovic needed to approach it accordingly. You can't just hope for much of the same. Novak should have approached the second set with more confidence and killer instinct. In that regard, I agree with the premise of this thread. Djokovic seemed like he was just hoping Nadal keeps doing much of the same, or that he gets even more nervous. When Nadal started fighting back (something Novak, in the back of his mind, should be expecting) and stepped up his game, Djokovic didn't really seem to have the intensity to match him.
In fact, Novak alluded to that in the press conference by virtually saying, and I'm paraphrasing here, that he accepts he's going to have ups and downs in a match like this against Nadal on clay, but that he wasn't able to play well when it mattered.
To me, it was obvious after the first set that both players had an extra gear or two. What worried me as a Nadal fan, is that Novak would find his. I even mentioned it in the chat, where I insisted -- quite redundantly -- that Djokovic really didn't play all that well after he took the first set, and my fear was that he would step up even more.
However, this doesn't take into account the biggest X-factor, and that's the conditions: Maybe we should ask ourselves why is it that in the first two sets of the 2012 final, last year's semi final, and yesterday's final, Novak was not able to play as cleanly as he does elsewhere against Nadal? Is it just a coincidence? Is it really a case of Nole being a "mental midget" like DarthFed suggested? Sure, Novak might be at times guilty of letting Nadal hang in some matches, but this is clay we're talking about, and anything other than a brilliant Djokovic performance will NOT get it done. Is it a coincidence that all 4 times Novak has beaten Nadal on clay (Madrid, Rome, Monte Carlo, Rome), he's played some pretty incredible tennis, and anything less on this surface was never enough to cut it?
So, is it just all mental? Why? He's beaten Nadal before in majors. He's made the finals of Roland Garros before. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he was nervous, and maybe even had doubts about being able to beat Nadal here. But could it be, that the conditions and the way they suit Nadal's game made a clean match by Novak close to impossible? Again, even the set he won was far from stellar.
You have to deal with the ball shooting up the court, which for starters, means Nadal's second serve is protected more than usual since it's got that extra kick (though Novak should have returned better regardless). It also means that you have no choice but to step inside and take Nadal's spin early, otherwise he'll find a forehand on the subsequent reply. It makes execution that much more difficult. Moreover, why are we ignoring just how physically tough the conditions were out there? I mean, never mind Djokovic puking on court, but here was Rafael Nadal, perhaps the fittest physical specimen we've ever seen, bending over between points in a sub 4-hour match. Novak looked drained even sooner than that. It's really not as simple as everyone is making it to be. We love throwing generalities and talk about mental toughness and mental weakness, but things are never that simple.
It's Nadal on a hot day in RG. You are not going to play cleanly. Novak didn't for the first two sets in 2012, then suddenly did once it started raining (again, a coincidence?), only for him to look ordinary the following day in hot conditions. Then you have last year, where Nadal was the better player throughout the match, and did far more dictating than he usually does against Djokovic. Coincidence? And finally, we have yesterday's final, which was played in the hottest, most humid, and most difficult conditions of all the aforementioned matches, to where the two fittest players on tour where suffering out there.
I think it's time to recognize that we can't lump different matches that were played under different circumstances together.
So while the premise of the thread is valid, it's really not that simple. It might apply to some of their matches, sure. And hell, it applies to yesterday's match. But it's important to understand why Nadal was able to come back and why Novak let him hang in there. Some of the responses such as "just make less errors and keep focus" are borderline laughable. I understand we all have favorites and many are disappointed, but come on.
That said, I think, in spite of the conditions, Novak SHOULD have played better. But he was never going to have a performance similar to the ones he had when he beat Nadal on clay in the past. Not in these conditions, in a best of 5 set match.
To be clear, this post isn't necessarily directed at you, nehmeth. The initial reply was, then I started rambling on into a more general thought process.
