Chapter 18: Perfection
In 2015 and early 2016, Novak Djokovic was unstoppable.
Three majors. Seven Masters 1000s. The World Tour Finals title. World #1. A 16-4 record against the top five. A 4-0 record against Rafael Nadal.
That is what Djokovic accomplished in 2015. It was a year to match 2011 in terms of dominance, though in 2015, Djokovic had the accumulated knowledge from four years at or near the top of the game as well as the smooth, well-rounded repertoire of tennis shots. It should be said that his best year coincided with Nadal’s worst – more on that later – which significantly lessened the strength of his competition, but Djokovic did things in 2015 that no male player had done before.
The core of Djokovic’s improvement was the serve. His relationship with the point-starting shot was long and complicated; many Djokovic fans still sarcastically post a GIF of the Serb practicing his serve with Todd Martin in 2010 and nearly falling down. Djokovic’s serve was very good in 2007 and 2008, but it ironically got worse during his better years from 2011 to 2014 (though 2013 was a very good serving year). In 2015, Djokovic reached the mountaintop and started to hit his spots with alarming frequency. For years, Federer had built an empire on exceptional spot serving, sacrificing some speed for exceptional accuracy and disguise. Fed could hit a pin-sized spot in any corner, and his toss would be identical regardless of which corner he intended to hit. Djokovic was in a similar mold in 2015. He particularly mastered the slider out wide from the deuce side, a deadly serve that tagged the sideline and leapt away from the court. Even when the serve came back, the return wouldn’t usually have much pace and the court would be open, since the returner would have to be fully outstretched outside the sideline just to make contact. Djokovic didn’t quite have the best serve in the world, but with his incredible defense and reflexes behind him, he could be even harder to break than the John Isners and Ivo Karlovićs of the world despite being nearly a foot shorter.
Djokovic also had a great returning year, even by his lofty standards. The combination of his dominant serving and stifling returning made him nearly impossible to beat; he could reel off any number of games in a row. He’d win deciding sets 6-0 and 6-1, maybe 6-2 if his opponent put up a good fight. Then there were his clean groundstrokes, which he could hit on the rise or late and would rarely break down. Djokovic had no weaknesses whatsoever; to beat him, you not only had to play your best, you had to hope he was having a serious off day.
It wasn’t immediately clear that 2015 would be a historically outstanding year for Djokovic. He won the Australian Open, but he was hardly at his best in doing so. His semifinal with Stan Wawrinka looks okay if you only watch the highlights, but those who saw the full match at the time are all too happy to tell you what an atrocious contest it was. Djokovic managed to win 6-0 in the fifth, but hit an astonishing zero winners and 14 unforced errors in the fourth set. He split tiebreaks with Murray in the final before winning nine games in a row to put the match to bed, a more lopsided version of the 2013 final between the same opponents.
Then Djokovic won the Sunshine Double, which was impressive, but he had done it in 2014 as well, so the year still seemed somewhat within the realm of expectation. That said, the Indian Wells final was something to behold—Djokovic looked to comfortably have Federer’s measure for a set and a half, taking a 6-2, 4-2 lead. Then the Swiss came back at him, winning an outrageous defense-to-offense point that completely changed the momentum of the match and leading to Federer getting back on serve in the second set.
In the ensuing tiebreak, Djokovic led 5-4 with two serves to come. This is a winning position for most players; in the last few years, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a couple scattered examples in which Djokovic did not win both those service points. Here, he somehow contrived a way to hit double faults on both points. It was as blatant a choke as you could write. He lost the set shortly thereafter. All the momentum was against Djokovic at that point; he’d had all the chances in the world to win the final in straight sets, and a Federer resurgence plus that grisly choke had tied the match. If there were ever an opportunity to wilt in a deciding set, this was it. And yet, Djokovic won the third set 6-2. Federer got a break back after trailing 0-2, but from there, Djokovic was as cool as ice. He served incredibly well, barely losing a point in his last few service games. It was a spectacular mental performance.
It became evident that the balance of power had shifted to Djokovic during the clay season. He met Nadal—who hadn’t been himself all year; look no further than the 2-6, 0-6, 6-7 (5) loss to Berdych at the Australian Open—in the Monte-Carlo semifinals. Early on, Nadal was sharp, breaking in the opening game. Djokovic leveled, and at 3-all on the Serb’s serve, they dug in for a vintage battle. Nadal had a break point; Djokovic saved it with a difficult baseline overhead winner. Djokovic had a game point; Nadal prolonged the game with a skidding reflex forehand passing shot. Each man applauded their opponent’s stunning winners. At one point, after four or five stunning rallies in a row, Djokovic smiled disbelievingly at his box.
Djokovic went on to hold, and here the difference between their form in 2015 was revealed. In previous years, Nadal would have answered the challenge, recognizing the magnitude of the test and raising his level even further to keep pace with Djokovic. But in this match he got left in the dust. Djokovic won the first set 6-3, then the second by an identical score. Nadal had his moments, like a sharp crosscourt backhand passing shot in the second set to go up 15-30 on Djokovic’s serve, but the Spaniard losing as badly as 6-3, 6-3 on clay was unthinkable. While his game was there in patches, the beast of previous years—not the relentless competitor, but the relentless player, ready to change tactics at a moment’s notice—was missing.
Djokovic pulled out of Madrid to rest up after winning Monte-Carlo (he beat Berdych in the final). Nadal made the final in the Spanish capital. He was set to play Murray. It was an opportunity to reset—Murray played similarly to Djokovic, with the great returning and defending and solid groundstrokes, and had never beaten Nadal on clay before. But Nadal turned in his flattest performance of the clay season, getting crushed 6-3, 6-2. Murray played well, but Nadal was listless. His shots landed inexplicably short. He mishit a backhand so badly that the ball was driven to the ground right in front of him. On match point, Murray rolled in a mediocre second serve and Nadal forehanded it into the middle of the net. Something was wrong. It might have been as simple as a really bad patch of form. It might have been a belief crater after his poor start to the year. It might have been a fear of getting hurt again, sparked by his millionth injury layoff at the end of 2014. Maybe he had a few too many miles on the odometer and was struggling to adapt to his body wearing out. Whatever the case, Nadal’s game was as lost as it had ever been.
Rome brought another straight-set loss for the clay god, this time to Wawrinka. Nadal had twice been up a break in the first set and led the eventual tiebreak 6-2, but wound up falling 6-7 (7), 2-6. Concerns were growing. Wawrinka had played well, but that had never gotten in Nadal’s way on clay before. He laughed at power hitters, absorbing their best early and then chewing them up late. Now, the depth on Nadal’s shots was gone, and with it, their bite. The heavy topspin helped short balls sit up invitingly for his opponents to bash home.
Nadal still visibly cared—in the Wawrinka match, he celebrated emphatically when winning points on his opponent’s serve at 1-4, a double break down, in the second set. But his aura was fading. His vamoses had little impact without the stinging forehands to back them up. His ranking fell out of the top five for the first time since 2005.
Djokovic, by contrast, was soaring. He won Rome, crushing Federer 6-4, 6-3 in the final without facing so much as a break point. His serving was superb—down 4-4, love-30 in the first set, Djokovic casually hit back-to-back aces—which put all the pressure on Federer to hold as easily, and it was there that Djokovic’s returning stifled the Swiss. Djokovic had arguably had a better clay season pre-Roland-Garros than Nadal in 2014 as well, though it hadn’t been nearly this emphatic. Djokovic had not lost since Federer beat him on a fast court in Dubai in late February. And Nadal’s game was in shambles. Rarely did a prediction that someone besides Nadal would win Roland-Garros feel so…safe.
As luck would have it, Djokovic (the #1 seed) and Nadal (the #6 seed) met in the quarterfinals. Nadal dropped one set en route, Djokovic none. This was the true test to see if Djokovic was truly ready to get over the Nadal hump in Paris. For all Nadal’s struggles in the clay season, the only year, the only one, that he hadn’t been himself at Roland-Garros was 2009. Rafa had won Roland-Garros five straight times; surely, he would find some of the old magic when Djokovic threatened his crown at Nadal’s favorite tournament. And Djokovic’s frightening form in 2015 made the match even more intriguing: he was going into Roland-Garros with more momentum than he had since 2011 and Nadal was playing worse than he had that year.
And Djokovic looked as scary as ever in the early games of the match. He flew to a 4-0 lead. Nadal’s ball was landing consistently short; Djokovic would pounce with fierce angled groundstroke winners or soft drop shots. He looked utterly in control of everything that was happening.
Then Nadal started to come back at him. The Spaniard drilled a backhand pass down the line that might as well have been fired from a cannon. Djokovic started to miss badly. Nadal started to serve better. He got both breaks back to level at 4-all. From there, the first set became a classic Djokovic-Nadal duel: Djokovic had three set points at 5-4, but Nadal locked in to save each of them with assertive tennis. “This is amazing. This is stunning. This is tennis at its finest,” wrote Jacob Steinberg in his live report for The Guardian. Nadal was under siege again at 5-6, and this time Djokovic managed to seal the set on his sixth opportunity: 7-5 in over an hour.
Nadal had reason to be optimistic at this point. Losing a grueling first set was hardly ideal, but the Spaniard had essentially spotted Djokovic a 4-0 lead and managed to make the set a knife fight anyway. Though he was still at a slight disadvantage during the high-quality patches of play, he’d been in similar situations against Djokovic on clay before, and he’d usually been able to make it work. Besides, Djokovic had won the first set in the Roland-Garros final just the year before and Nadal had stormed past him in the next three sets. Nadal would typically have found his best self the following sets, either winning or dragging the match into epic territory.
But it didn’t happen here. Nadal managed to cling onto his serve until 3-4 in the second set and simply found himself overmatched thereafter. Djokovic broke him. Serving for a surely unassailable two-set lead, Novak ran into some nerves on set points and found himself at deuce. He missed a first serve. Then, astonishingly, he decided to serve and volley. This is near-suicide against Nadal on clay unless you hit a perfect serve—Nadal’s passing shots are likely the best in history. All it takes is giving him a target and the ball goes whizzing past you, even from a return of serve. And on the slower clay surface, Nadal gets the extra milliseconds of time he needs to make that pass as mean as possible.
Nadal drilled a great return, keeping the ball low, low to Djokovic’s backhand side. Presented with an extremely difficult half-volley, Djokovic’s odds of winning the point looked shitty. He had never been blessed with the softest hands. But here, he flicked a delightful half-volley crosscourt that was both sharp enough to spin away from Nadal and short enough to be impossible to reach. It was the shot of the match. The tactic had made no sense whatsoever, but the burst of pure confidence Djokovic executed it with proved decisive. Buoyed by that outrageous winner, Djokovic converted the set point to close out the second set, 6-3.
And from there, Djokovic cruised. Once he broke Nadal for a second time to take a 3-0 lead in the third, the match was done. Nadal would say later that he was disappointed with the way he fought, that he had not battled sufficiently hard in the third set, but his faltering game was the bigger issue. Vamoses and sis could not make up for a lack of depth. He lost the third set 6-1, double faulting on match point. He had seen the crown fall from his head in a most emphatic way. His mighty forehand produced just 3 winners all match. Djokovic had over 20.
The biggest issue with Nadal, whether it was down to a lack of confidence, bad form, or something else, was that his game seemed without purpose. He wasn’t really trying to attack with any regularity. He did attack sometimes, and often missed, but the biggest issue was that the misses seemed to convince him to stop attacking. He predictably found himself on the defensive due to Djokovic teeing off on short balls, but Nadal didn’t show any signs of trying to adjust, despite surely understanding it was a losing proposition. In the annals of history, this match should have been momentous: Djokovic defeating Nadal on the Parisian clay at his seventh attempt, finally bringing down the King of Clay in a show of supreme perseverance. And yet, Nadal was so out of sorts that tennis fans tend to talk about this match like Djokovic had beaten someone else. There was no inevitability behind his inevitable resistance. The Spaniard was that lost.
It would have been weird for Djokovic, I think. This was the match he had wanted to win for nearly a decade, and it felt more routine than anything. Surely this wasn’t the way he dreamt of winning. He had prepared for all-out war, not for a dissection. Should he still have a big emotional release? If he did have an emotional release, could it affect him negatively? After all, he still had two matches to play to win the tournament. Marian Vajda theorized on The Tennis Podcast that beating Nadal so early in the tournament had been too cathartic for Novak, costing him energy and focus in the final.
And in the end, that was what cost him. He came through a bizarre semifinal with Murray: 6-3, 6-3, 5-7, 5-7, 6-1. The beyond-convincing fifth set seemed to be the latest indication of Djokovic’s superiority over any and all of his rivals, but in reality, it was the last best tennis he played at Roland-Garros in 2015. Djokovic was never supposed to lose the final against Wawrinka, who was dangerous on his day but surely no match for neo-Djokovic, who had lost just twice in 2015.
But Djokovic was flat, flat for most of the match. Though he won the first set behind solid serving and seemed poised to sweep to the title, he soon found himself on the end of the Wawrinka onslaught. Wawrinka redlined for most of the last three sets, ripping winners down the line from both wings. At one point in the third set, in a role reversal from the Nadal match, Djokovic had three forehand winners to his opponent’s 20. Djokovic just couldn’t produce enough offense to slow the Wawrinka bullet train. He fought, going up a break in the fourth and producing break point in Wawrinka’s last two service games, but he was overpowered. The Swiss zoomed a backhand winner down the line, fittingly, to seal the title.
Djokovic’s doubts must have been circling fiercely after that loss. Was it not written in the stars for him to win all four majors? How would he recover psychologically from a third Roland-Garros final loss in three appearances? Yet Djokovic won the next four majors in succession, capping an insane run with his first Roland-Garros title. For the rest of 2015, he had to deal with a resurgent, ultra-aggressive Federer, but Djokovic fended off the Swiss in four-setters in the Wimbledon and U.S. Open finals. He simply outclassed Federer in London, comfortably winning in four despite losing a brutal second-set tiebreak during which he'd had six set points, and in New York he saved 19 of 23 points to deny a razor-sharp Roger. He was exceptional, defending, attacking, serving, and returning at incredible levels. It seems that all Djokovic needed to play some of the best tennis of all time was to have his heart broken repeatedly.
Nadal and Djokovic played twice more in 2015, on the hard courts of Beijing and London for the World Tour Finals. Neither match was remotely close. In fact, they were as lopsided as Djokovic-Nadal matches could get. Djokovic was near-perfect, continuing his trend since late 2013 of playing his best against Nadal on a hard court, and Nadal’s crisis of confidence was continuing. He couldn’t scratch Djokovic’s serve and was tortured in his own service games time and again.
With Nadal serving at 0-1 in the first set of the World Tour Finals match, Djokovic broke him at love by hitting four groundstroke winners in a row: forehand down the line, backhand down the line, forehand down the line, backhand crosscourt. It was like tennis was a video game and Djokovic had beaten it. Even Nadal at his best probably wouldn’t have been able to defy this Djokovic, but Nadal at his worst had no chance.
Djokovic’s dominance culminated with an utter demolition job of Nadal in the 2016 Doha final. The Serb won 6-1, 6-2 in the most lopsided Djokovic-Nadal match to date. While the 2015 matches were partially marred by Nadal’s inability to play anywhere near his best, this one was defined by Djokovic playing unanswerable tennis.
“It’s easy to analyze,” Nadal said after the match. “I played against a player who did everything perfect. Nobody playing tennis like this…ever. Since I know this sport, I never saw someone playing at this level.” Djokovic, usually beyond modest in press, could only concur: “it did feel as close to perfection as it can get.”
They were both right. Djokovic was hitting the ball so hard, so early, that Nadal could only defend, and even the Spaniard’s sterling defense drew next to no errors. On the rare occasion that Nadal did have the upper hand, Djokovic was a nuisance to hit through; many of Nadal’s down-the-line forehands immediately came back deep to his backhand. Djokovic cranked crosscourt backhands at sick angle—and it was never clear where he was going with that shot, he could take it early and yank it crosscourt, or he could wait a beat and take the ball down the line, or he could wait a beat and still go hard crosscourt—and crushed forehands like Federer in his heyday.
Nadal really did try. He wasn’t at his best, sure, but he played better than in some of his 2015 losses to Djokovic. In the very first game, he crushed a few forehands down the line, getting to break point. On the first point of the second set, he nailed a perfect backhand pass on the run after being pulled all over the court by Djokovic. It was just that the Serb had reached an astonishing level of play, imposing his take-the-ball-on-the-rise on practically every point, and in doing so denied Nadal any opportunity to hit back.
The win marked striking landmarks in the rivalry. Djokovic won his 10th and 11th consecutive sets against Nadal. It was his ninth win against the Spaniard in their last 10 matches. But more importantly, it was Djokovic’s 24th win in the head-to-head to Nadal’s 23. Since their very first meeting back in 2006, Nadal had led the rivalry. After the 2009 Madrid semifinal—how long ago that seemed!—Nadal had 14 wins to Djokovic’s four. Nadal had never really trailed in an important rivalry; since hitting his prime, he had led all his head-to-heads with the prominent players on tour.
But no longer. Djokovic’s persistence after all those gut-wrenching losses to Nadal had finally paid off. Nadal still had 14 majors to Djokovic’s 10, but in the titanic battle of their head-to-head, the clash between their immense skills and wills, Djokovic had surpassed Nadal.
In the 2016 Australian Open semifinals, Djokovic replicated the insane level of play from the Doha final for the first two sets against Federer, reeling off a 6-1 and a 6-2 in under an hour. It was tennis that defied words. The Doha match against Nadal had been amazing, but Federer had always taken to hard courts better, and this was a Grand Slam event, and unlike Nadal, Federer was not in a bad patch. Djokovic came down to earth by the end of the match—Federer even managed to take the third set 6-3, a pretty incredible push given the circumstances—but Djokovic had gained new respect in the tennis world. A few months later, Rod Laver, when asked about the GOAT on the men’s side by ESPN, said, “the way that Djokovic has been playing over the last year or so, I would say that Djokovic and Federer are equals.” Federer had six more majors than Djokovic at the time.
Djokovic was playing tennis sent straight from hell. Federer would kill you with hot shots. Nadal would set up his forehand with meticulous, inevitable care. But Djokovic was playing with mastery in every facet of the game. He would hit shots that were safely within the lines, yet carried enough spin, depth, and pace to force the opponent into an uncomfortable reply. He’d do it from defensive positions as well as when on the attack. It was hard to know where he would hit any given shot, such was his disguise on both forehand and backhand, so you’d inevitably look like a fool getting completely wrong-footed by what appeared to be a normal rally shot. His serve wasn’t hard, but it was precise, and even if you got it back, you’d have to deal with those lethal groundstrokes. Many opponents wouldn’t be able to break Djokovic, or even find their way to a break point. The level was obviously unsustainable; Djokovic had been around for a long time, and this was the first time he’d truly perfected his game. The deadly peak was unlikely to stick around for more than a match here and there. But when Djokovic played at his apex, there was quite simply nothing anybody could do.
Nadal finally hit his low point in the same Australian Open tournament, losing in five sets to Fernando Verdasco in the first round. It was the first time he had lost at the opening hurdle of a major since Wimbledon in 2013 and just the second time in his entire career. He had not won a major since Roland-Garros in 2014, by far his longest drought since his breakthrough in 2005. He had won just three titles in 2015, all of them relatively unimportant ones. But Nadal, as confused and disappointed in his tennis as he must have been, was as resilient as ever. Even as he played galaxies below his best level, he was good enough to make the World Tour Finals in 2015. He had brushed rock bottom, and it was bad. But Nadal being Nadal, he would immediately start climbing out of the pit.
Thanks so much for reading The Golden Rivalry. And thanks to those of you who have subscribed recently—it’s great to have you here and I’ll do my best not to disappoint. We’ve just cleared the halfway point of the book, which is surreal to type. Before long, we’ll get to matches that will start to feel kind of recent (gasp!). Gone are the young bucks of 2008 and the tireless warriors of 2012. This will be a period of evolution for Djokovic and Nadal, of adapting their games to suspend their decline for as long as possible. But we’re not quite there yet. I’ll be back on Wednesday with the next chapter. See you then. -Owen
will you be publishing this as a book do you think?