1. Novak Djokovic has been playing professional tennis for quite a while. He’s been a top 3 player since 2007. He’s played in endless big matches. Yet it still feels like he’s the hardest tennis player to write about. Not so much in terms of character narratives, but his actual game. How does Novak Djokovic play tennis? How is he so successful? Some writeups make him sound like a purely defensive player - a guy who drives people crazy by forcing them to go for too much. A super bendy backboard. He wins by attrition. He wins because the other player can’t execute properly.



2. RF, on the other hand, remains the easiest player to write about. You can choose to write about the aesthetic element to him and his game, or you can choose to write about his perfectly obvious brand of tennis. It’s like the ease with which RF moves around the court hitting crazy shots translates into easy ways to describe his feats. There’s the obviously awesome serve - seemingly unbreakable until Sunday’s final. There’s the massive forehand, which has been punishing fools for way over a decade now. There’s the obviously pretty backhand, which, though historically a liability, masquerades as another little factory of gorgeous shots every now and again. There’s the obvious transition game, and RF’s flair coming to net. I’m feeling super relaxed and comfortable just writing these sentences, just so you know. They just flow through my fingers. And I haven’t even touched the return of serve gimmick, which again, puts a fancy, shiny facade over an aspect of RF’s game that’s been a historical “weakness” (quotation marks given that he’s above average versus the field in this aspect, but below the level achieved by his toughest competitors, aka, the Big 4): the return of second serves. See how easy this is? Isn’t it easy to read, too? I mean, Paragraph 1 was supposed to be all about Djokovic, and right now it’s getting dwarfed by this RF paragraph. And I could go on and on! But I already made my point.

3. It does not help Novak Djokovic that he lacks those easy things to write about. His serve is now very good, but it’s hardly at RF’s level. People really do love aces, and in Sunday’s final he produced only 3. Djokovic does not possess the easy, frequent power off either his forehand or his backhand - when Djokovic accelerates on either wing, you can feel the effort behind it (except for those rare times when he’s timing the ball beautifully and it seems like the little yellow thing is flying off his racquet without a whole lot of fuss. But that’s not the norm. At all). Djokovic doesn’t often come to net, even if he’s doing it more than ever these days (in Sunday’s final, RF came to net almost twice as many times - 59 attempts to 32 - yet they both achieved the same 66% success rate in the forecourt). Djokovic’s two-handed backhand, a gorgeous shot in my opinion, might seem utilitarian and “common” for many. After all, two-handed backhands are by far the norm in men and women’s tennis. But with all this being said, there are easy things about Djokovic’s game to write about. His defensive exploits, for one. His insane flexibility during those defensive feats has been photographed and written about often, and for good reason: they’re mind-bending. Djokovic chasing a ball that’s going to his backhand side, sliding into a ¾ split, then blasting a very good defensive/counterpunching shot is a modern marvel of extreme athleticism and glorious ball-striking. You could easily argue that it defies physics. This does feel easy to write about. The rest of his game? Not as obvious.

4. A few years ago, when David Nalbandián retired, there was a debate about whether he or Djokovic had the better backhand. Plenty of experts and former players sided with Nalbandiáns - a fantastic, phenomenal shot on its own. Listen - I loved watching David Nalbandián hit backhands. But the debate seemed hilarious to me. While Nalbandián can maybe equal Djokovic’s production on the backhand side on the offensive side of things, the breakdown of the defensive side of the game on that shot is just not close at all. However, it seemed like defense didn’t even matter in that debate. Defense, so heralded in other sports, seems like a dirty word in tennis.

5. At any rate, were’ now at paragraph 5 and I don’t think I’ve come close to really answering the question posited in the first paragraph of this barrage of words. I told you this is not easy! Not even for me, and I’ve probably watched 70-75% of Djokovic’s pro career. But enough stalling: let’s start establishing the pillars on which Novak Djokovic’s game is built on.

6. The first pillar of Djokovic’s game has to be his baseline fundamentalism. And by this, I mean his perpetual obsession with operating in a part of the court that extends two feet behind the baseline, and two feet in front of it. This is where Djokovic lives, and where he will always choose to be if he has his say. Even when he’s pushed back, you can see him frantically trying to move forward and return to his geometrical home. The unnerving part for opponents is that Djokovic’s fanaticism about court position effectively shrinks the court. There’s less open space, fewer angles. And what’s more annoying for guys is that this doesn’t vary depending on whether Djokovic is serving or returning, given the way Djokovic positions himself for first and second serve returns, and his forward momentum after both.

7. The second pillar of Djokovic’s game is his ability to change the direction of the ball off both wings with utmost ease. This is a very rare skill, and it has been discussed to some extent. The easiest thing in tennis is to hit the ball in the same direction it came from. You need that extra bit of timing to be able to re-direct the trajectory of the ball. But Djokovic doesn’t stop there: not only can he change the direction of the ball as he pleases…he can do so with little warning. Part of this has to do with the way Djokovic hits the ball off his forehand and his backhand. His swings allow him to hide the direction he is going with his shots, particularly if he takes the ball a little late on the backhand side. It’s just very hard for an opponent to read, and Djokovic tends to vary his patterns constantly.

8. The third pillar of Djokovic’s game is his uncommon ability to hit the ball either on the rise or late, and be equally effective either way. This adds a very subtle layer of unpredictability for his opponents, particularly combined with the element of surprise described in paragraph 7. There’s no ball-machine effect of getting the same ball over and over again. Djokovic might choose to take a backhand on the rise, limiting the amount of time his opponent has to respond. Or he might choose to take it a bit late, and fire it down the line. He can do this off the forehand side, too. This constant disruption of rhythm will drive anyone crazy.

9. The fourth pillar of Djokovic’s game is his ability to put different spins on both his forehand and his backhand. This is something that’s not very easy to appreciate while watching from TV, but you can definitely see it if you focus on it. on Sunday Djokovic varied the amount of topspin off both wings to tremendous effect. While he doesn’t have the easy power to blow you off the court with either, he sure has the ability to produce heavy, deep shots off both wings. And he doesn’t even settle on one kind of spin within a given point. If the rally is long enough, you’ll see Djokovic hit flat forehands, heavy topspin forehands, angled forehands with sidespin, etc. Same goes for the backhand. This is another layer of unpredictability to Djokovic’s game, and one that his opponents surely dislike. After all, most pros love a consistent ball in order to get into a rhythm. Djokovic won’t give you that. Again, It’s not the most obvious thing to observe, though, as the difference between a topspin backhand and a slice backhand. But the effect on the opponent is the same: they will have to hit a ball at a different height, and their timing will have to adjust accordingly.

10. The fifth pillar of Djokovic’s game is his ability to disguise his intent behind any given point. What is Djokovic trying to accomplish out there? Is he trying to go guns blazing, like RF on Sunday? Is he trying to merely rally with you, hoping you make a mistake? Is he going to grind down your weakness point after point, shrinking the court in a way that flares up all your insecurities? The answer is: it depends. on Sunday against RF, Djokovic did a whole bunch of things. Of course, he tried to target RF’s backhand corner, as he’s historically done. He went there with pace, he went there with spin, he looked for angles, and always tried to go for depth. But Djokovic also went to RF’s forehand corner quite often, with either cross-court forehands, down the line backhands, or even inside-in forehands. Sometimes he went there with pace. Sometimes with spin. Sometimes he disguised he was going there, and other times he was fairly obvious with his intent. Djokovic also was unafraid to go deep up the middle, too, and given his tendencies, he did that off his forehand and backhand wing. Against other players, he’ll mix-in a few drop shots, though that element was gone on Sunday, and with good reason: RF was already trying to end points as soon as possible, so why play into his hands?

11. The five pillars described above could be the foundation of Djokovic’s tennis philosophy: to be entirely unpredictable, shot to shot, point to point. Heck, you could even add his marginally improved transition game as another layer of unpredictability, and a necessary one, too. The more options, the better. Same with his marginal increase of sliced backhands. But the key is to not make any given approach too much of the spotlight, and remain an enigma.

12. Djokovic has become a master of uncertainty, in more ways than one. Is he ever in control of a match? Is he ever not in control of a match? Is he allowing you to do what you want…or making you do things you aren’t all that into? Is he attacking you? Is he merely defending? The answer to all these questions might be yes, depending on the point. Depending on the match. Depending on the opponent. Djokovic is not necessarily a chameleon: at the end of the day, he’s playing his own take on contemporary tennis, not morphing into someone else’s idea of what tennis should be. Is this easy to write about? No. Is it easy to talk about? Nope. Is it even obvious? Not really. Notice that we’re in paragraph twelve, and I’ve yet to discuss Djokovic’s return of serve, one of the extraordinary elements of his game (one that he performs at a historically great level). This is because within the ecosystem of Djokovic’s tennis, it’s merely coherent with the pillars of his philosophy, not the philosophy itself.

View image | gettyimages.com

13. In a way, it’s not surprising that it’s taken Djokovic just a little longer than most all-time greats to fully come of age. It has to be a tough mental task to constantly maintain unpredictability. To maintain uncertainty. Particularly when there has to be normal-human uncertainty within himself about how to execute any given shot. Perhaps this is why he’s so prone to frustration on the court. Even if the outward appearance is uncertainty, there has to be certainty within himself. And who are we kidding here - not even RF is 100% certain of everything all the time.



14. From Wikipedia: “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables, such as position x and momentum p, can be known simultaneously.” This is as good a description of Djokovic’s game as any. You can sometimes know where he is (though that’s kinda hard sometimes on defense - he flies around the court so much), but can you know the momentum? If you know the momentum, do you know the position of his next shot? You might guess right. But you won’t be entirely certain. You just never are, and that’s Novak Djokovic’s core tenet. Everything around his game is centered around maintaining this principle. He’s a riddle that keeps refreshing itself over and over again.

Bonus Tracks from the final

15. If this were an essay, I would’ve stopped there, but since this is more of an informal barrage of ideas, let’s continue, and delve into the nitty gritty of the Djokovic-RF final we saw on Sunday. Partially related to everything above, you cannot underestimate this simple fact: RF covered more court than Djokovic. 66.4 more meters, to be exact. This might not seem much, but it just tells you how impossible the narrative of Djokovic as purely a defender is. If Djokovic is doing all the running…how does RF end up covering more ground? Also, this is now a trend, given that RF covered 204.6 more meters than Djokovic in the Wimbledon final.

16. The simple fact is that while RF was extremely offensive all night, Djokovic made him defend constantly, too. Djokovic kept trying to take RF from his comfort zone, that spot halfway between the middle of the baseline and the left sideline where RF has made his millions over the years. And once RF scrambled to cover his forehand side, it was back to covering the other side of the court in a hurry. For what it’s worth, I kept marvelling at RF’s defense Sunday night. For crying out loud, the guy is 34 years old, and if he were a car, he’d have about a million miles on him. The vast majority of them on cement, mind you. How he can still reach for incredible gets on his forehand side is beyond me. If the man lost half a step a few years ago…he might have recovered it.



17. RF ended with 21 more winners than Djokovic (56 to 35), yet that includes a disparity in aces (11 to 3) that wasn’t there in their Wimbledon final. Back then, RF hit 12 more winners than Djokovic (58 to 46), though that included only one more ace (14 to 13). This, coupled with the fact that Djokovic easily had a better serving performance at Wimbledon (66% first serves, 13 aces, 1 double fault) than at the US Open (62% first serves, just 3 aces and 5 double-faults), reinforces a thought that’s been rattling around my head: RF played a better match than he did at Wimbledon. Djokovic played a worse match than he did at Wimbledon. Yet the result was the same: Djokovic in 4 sets. It should be said that RF had a marginally better day serving at Wimbledon (+1% 1st serves, 3 more aces, 2 fewer double-faults), yet that drop-off isn’t as significant as what Djokovic had to endure. Plus, RF more than made up for it with a far superior day returning serve. At Wimbledon, RF won 31% of return points, which was 3% lower than Djokovic. At the US Open, RF won 39% of return points, which was 1% higher than what Djokovic achieved. Not only that, but RF created at least one break point in 3 more games than Djokovic (11 to 8). Of course, RF was an abysmal 17% successful at converting those BPs, but still. It was a remarkable return of serve performance against a server who’s enjoyed a pretty good year in that department (for 2015, Djokovic is averaging 70% of service points won).



18. Only 6 more points were played in the US Open final than in the Wimbledon final (292 to 286). And you’d think the Wimbledon final would’ve had the edge easily had Djokovic served out the match at 5-2 in the 4th set on Sunday.

19. Eva Asderaki-Moore, you were absolutely dominant. Your crew of line judges was suboptimal to say the least, and only once did you fail to correct them. It was a chair umpiring performance for the ages, in a tough, tough match. Bravo.

20. In a way, RF’s losing effort in the final reminded me a lot of his frequent losses to Nadal, at least in principle. RF’s whole game is based on control. Even when he was more of a pure baseliner years ago, he would trick you into thinking he wasn’t interested in handling a point…until he suddenly was. He would toy with you, like a big, super athletic cat against a tiny little mouse. And then, BAM. You’re done. Nowadays, his intentions are completely transparent. He’s essentially playing full-court press basketball on a tennis court, given that his explicit offensive intent on serve (which started with the Annacone hire) has translated into his return game. It’s constant pressure, all the time, and he will attack you as soon as he gets half a look at anything. Given RF’s results since hitting the grass at Halle, you can’t argue that he’s not been successful with this all-out aggressive approach. I mean, the guy went through a Masters 1000 field and 6 rounds at a Slam without losing a set…and barely even losing serve. In Cincinnati he beat Murray and Djokovic back to back without conceding even a break point. My main point is this: his attitude against fellow master baseliners like Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray has always been to try to impose his game, rather than get into a baseline war. Precision over consistency, haymakers instead of jabs. The US Open final was merely the most extreme version of his attitude versus his brethren in the baseline elite. He lost, but his philosophy allows him to continue believing that if he had just made fewer errors, if he had just played slightly better here and there, he would have won. Heck, he won only 2 fewer points than Djokovic, so maybe there’s some truth to that. But there’s also a sense of delusion. Djokovic has now beaten him in the past 3 slam finals. Over 5 sets, will those margins ever favor RF? He has come close enough to keep believing in what he’s doing, which might not necessarily be good thing.

21. Then again, there’s the harsh reality that RF won’t become a master of baseline consistency at age 34. Early in his career RF was indeed more consistent, particularly on the forehand side. The backhand was iffier, and he didn’t serve as well as he does now. Oh, and pretty much all his second serve returns off the backhand side were meek, inoffensive slices. But he could survive for long stretches in a point, also partly because he didn’t overload so much responsibility on his forehand to finish points early. But even then, Nadal found a way around him (and across multiple surfaces). Djokovic beat him in 2007 and 2008, when RF was merely 26. Maybe it’s time to realize RF is just not as consistent as Nadal and Djokovic from the back of the court. Maybe the all-out aggression is the only way RF can try and overcome the baseline mastery of his biggest rivals. RF is now 3-9 in Slam finals vs Djokovic and Nadal. Against everyone else (a list that includes Mark Philippoussis, Marat Safin, Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt, 35-year-old Andre Agassi, Fernando González, Marcos Baghdatis, Andy Murray, Robin Soderling, and Juan Martin del Potro), he’s 14-1.

22. With that being said, I couldn’t help but marvel at how successful RF was on Sunday with the backhand down the line. It’s been a constant in his career that while he can occasionally come up with the flashy winner using that shot, he’s never seemed all that comfortable doing it, particularly at the start of a rally. Many implored him to go down the line when Nadal was pummeling his backhand with the heavy left cross-court forehand, to no avail (and no matter the surface). Djokovic and Murray have gotten RF in constant AD-court rallies where RF has seemed quite hesitant to pull the trigger down the line. But these days, RF is going down the line with his backhand early and often, and the results have been quite positive. It destabilizes opponents that are used to expecting cross-court backhands from RF, and allows him to lurk forward and finish off points, should the ball even come back. It’s quite a fascinating turn of events, but there are questions around it, too. Can RF actually maintain this level of accuracy with what could be argued is his worst shot? Was the Cincy-US Open stretch one of those purple patches of good form that then evaporate when that shot’s efficiency returns to the mean? We’ll see. But the backhand down the line is the main element in RF’s frantic effort to limit rallies as much as possible these days. RF as a long-rally exterminator is an idea Matt Kriz mentioned, and I can’t get it out of my head. Post-Wimbledon, that’s been RF’s main focus. And with good reason: he’s comfortable playing that way…and he’s 34 freaking years old!

23. It’s fascinating to try and project where Djokovic will finish in terms of career accomplishments. Naturally, the talk right now has been all about the Slams. Can he match Nadal? Can he dare reach RF? I was thinking about other milestones, though. How about Masters 1000s? Djokovic has won 4 this year, and made the final in two others. 6 finals at that level in a single season is ridiculous, and there are two of those events left! Djokovic has won Shanghai twice, and Paris three times. If he makes the final in either, he’ll break the record for most Masters 1000 finals in a year (held jointly by himself and Nadal with 6). Should he win both, he’d break the record for most Masters 1000 in a year (another record jointly held with Nadal, at 5). But how many of these titles can he accumulate for the rest of his career? Should his good fortune with injuries continue, it’s easy to predict he’ll go past 30. Which boggles the mind.

24. How about Year-End #1 finishes, or as Nadal calls it, “winning the league”? Djokovic is at 4 now, just one away from Connors and RF, and two away from Sampras. He’ll be hard pressed to defend the vast majority of this, his second incredible season. But he won’t need to. After all, it’s not super common to wrap up year-end #1 status by the US Open.

25. It was mildly amusing, if not predictably frustrating, how people have forgotten all about Rafael Nadal. Yes, the man has had a down year. He’s had some odd losses, and though he looks like proper Nadal sometimes, he then devolves into a barely recognizable iteration of himself. Yet his career, in my humble opinion, is second to none in men’s tennis. 14 Slams, 27 Masters 1000s in the toughest era of his sport, winning Head-to-Heads vs his biggest rivals, incredible records vs the Top-10, and in finals? All the while dealing with an unbalanced schedule in terms of surface, and endless physical ailments? As Andrew Burton would say, tennis is all too What Have You Done For Me Lately sometimes. The man is 29. He will add to his resume.

26. A scattered thought: what if Djokovic gets on a Slam finals streak similar to the one he enjoyed at the Masters 1000 level? After losing the 2012 Cincinnati final, Djokovic was just 12-10 in Masters 1000 finals. He then went on to win 12 straight (he’s now lost 2 straight). When Djokovic lost to Stan Wawrinka at the French Open final, his record in Slam finals was just 8-8. He’s now won two straight, and Australia looms, where he’s undefeated once he reaches the semifinals. Of course, then comes the French Open and all the horrors that traditionally await him there. So we’ll see.

27. What if the Holy Triad - Nadal, RF, and Djokovic - end up with more Slams than Sampras? Someone mentioned this on Twitter the other day, and I thought it was a tantalizing thought. What if they all finish with more than 14 Slams, and all with a career Slam to boot? 28. Partially related: what if we’ve been watching the three greatest male players of all time play each other in the same era? Boom goes the dynamite.

