Chapter 22: Greatest Match

In the 2018 Wimbledon semifinals, Djokovic and Nadal played their best match yet.

Screenshot: Wimbledon YouTube Channel

What defines a great tennis match? The quality of play, of course—but what goes into that? Sometimes one player performing their best inherently negates their opponent’s weapons, resulting in a demolition, and we don’t want that. Quality means little without evenness; you could even argue quality is contingent on a good matchup. The result needs to keep you guessing with at least a few twists and turns—if the winner is clear early on, the match lacks drama. It needs to be cinematic even though it is real. And both players need to play well—maybe not well in the way that doesn’t allow their opponent to shine, but if each player doesn’t at least touch their best level for a little while, the match is more of a scrap than a dazzler. Styles of play are paramount, then. They must mesh with each other pleasingly, neither overpowering the other but each being enough of a threat to overpower to imbue pressured moments with real tension. Each player needs to have their moments but never for long enough to make the match one-sided. The players both need weapons big enough to hurt each other and defense good enough to survive being hurt by those weapons.

Easy.

It’s for these reasons that for almost every epic five-set match you can name, I can nitpick it. (Try me in the comments, I dare you.) Five sets is a timeframe long enough to poke holes in the quality of any contest, if only for brief moments. 2008 Wimbledon final, the popular choice for best match ever? Nadal won the first two sets fairly comfortably and the match didn’t get really good until the last three. 2019 Wimbledon final? What that match had in drama it lacked in quality; Djokovic sleepwalked through boring second and fourth sets that were more reminiscent of a first-round match than a final between two GOATs. The 2009 Australian Open final saw Nadal take over in the fifth set, robbing the most important moments of the match of drama. The 2013 Australian Open match between Wawrinka and Djokovic had a 6-1 first set during which Djokovic looked like a club player. Same with Alcaraz-Djokovic in the Wimbledon final last year, except Alcaraz was the hapless victim in the opener.

Extraordinarily rare is the match with no lapses. (Gold standard: Nadal-Verdasco, 2009 Australian Open semifinal.) It’s like all the planets aligning—you need the right characters, the right surface, the right day, and then you need both players to play close enough to their best to make the match athletically enthralling and at a similar enough level to make the match a pure drama.

The 2018 Wimbledon semifinal, Djokovic vs. Nadal 52, ticked all the boxes.

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Wimbledon in 2018 was the first time in years when the Big Three all entered a tournament at something resembling full strength. There was Federer, the defending champion and recent Australian Open winner. There was Nadal, the Roland-Garros champion and world #1. (He and Federer had split the last six major titles.) Djokovic wasn’t back to his best yet, but had played well through the clay season, and made the final at Queens. (Once there, he lost to Marin Čilić from championship point up, just the third time Djokovic had lost after having a match point in his career.) Federer was on one side of the draw, Nadal and Djokovic were on the other, set to play in the semifinals as the second and 12th seeds. Djokovic’s recent struggles aside, it was almost like a throwback to 2008 or 2009.

Nadal was in searing form. He didn’t drop a set until the quarterfinals. Once there, he played the 5th seed in del Potro, the worst quarterfinal opponent possible considering Rafa was ranked #1. The big Argentine played a spectacular match. He lost the first set narrowly, but won the second in a long tiebreak (Nadal double faulted on set point up at 6-5), then the third in an emphatic 6-4. There were already three hours on the clock at this point; a comeback would require being convincingly better than del Potro, who wasn’t slowing and whose titanic forehands were, if anything, growing more devastatingly accurate.

Nadal answered the call. He forced a fifth set with a fierce crosscourt backhand winner. He broke at 2-all in the fifth with an identical shot. But del Potro made Nadal defend that break lead with every ounce of his power, forcing his way to two break points at 2-3 and three more at 3-4. Nadal needed each shot in his toolkit to fend off the bombardment, plus some new additions: this tournament, he was hitting forehand drop shots frequently, forcing his opponents to play tighter to the baseline when the ball was on his lethal forehand. If they dropped back, he'd drop-shot them to hell, if they played in, Nadal would crush his usual forehands and his opponents couldn’t catch up. That shot helped Rafa save all five of those break points. In the end, Nadal angled off a backhand volley to win 7-5, 6-7 (7), 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in a brutal four hours and 48 minutes. This was a match that hit every criteria for a great contest, surely the best the ATP had to offer so far in 2018 and a match that would hold its own, head-to-head, against any match in the 21st century. Two days later, no one was talking about it anymore.

Djokovic had an easier quarterfinal opponent in Kei Nishikori—he’d lost just one set en route to the last eight—and soaked up some incredible rallies across an even first two sets, then pulled away to win the last two convincingly. While he had been very good in the clay season, this was different. Djokovic suffocated Nishikori, executing every facet of the game at a higher level than his opponent. The final two sets were truly vintage.

The stakes for the Djokovic-Nadal semifinal were immense. Federer had shockingly lost to Kevin Anderson in the quarterfinals, blowing a two-set lead and a match point before Anderson outlasted him 13-11 in the fifth set. Anderson was then dragged into the trenches for an extraordinary, deeply painful semifinal against John Isner. Neither could break the other, so the fifth set went for an agonizing 50 games, finally won 26-24 by Anderson to conclude the six-and-a-half-hour match. With a surely zombified Anderson waiting in the final, Djokovic-Nadal, for all intents and purposes, would decide the Wimbledon champion.

Not only that, but the head-to-head stood at 26-25 in favor of Djokovic, who had held the lead since taking it for the first time after the 2016 Doha final (how things had changed since then!). With Nadal having a better year and being ranked higher, this was his best chance yet to even the rivalry. By winning Wimbledon, Nadal could seal an 18th major title and his second in a row, which would carry extra weight coming on a less favorable surface for the Spaniard. If Djokovic got the victory, he could restore his lost momentum by firmly reestablishing himself at the top of the game with Federer and Nadal, not to mention adding another major to the pile for the first time in more than two years.

There was a sense of urgency from the very beginning of Djokovic-Nadal #52. Anderson-Isner had lasted well into the evening, leaving just three hours before Wimbledon’s 11:00 pm curfew that would force the match to pause and resume the next day. If Djokovic and Nadal played one of their classic duels, they would surely have to pick up again the following morning, an unappealing prospect for them both. So they came out of the gates with purpose, serving well, attacking at the first opportunity, and as usual, not letting a single point slide by without a fight.

Djokovic was sharp early, razor-sharp, starting with the very first point: a forehand winner down the line at the end of a short rally on Nadal’s serve. Both his serving and returning were at near-galactic levels early on, putting immense pressure on Nadal to be perfect. His sliding serve from the deuce side was consistently splitting the sideline, flying by Nadal untouched time after time. Ever cool in the clutch, the Spaniard, Nadal held his first three service games, all after either deuce or facing break point. By comparison, Djokovic lost just four points in his first three service holds. In the lone pressured moment, a 15-30 hole at 2-3, Djokovic responded with consecutive winners after the serve. The Serb was consistently depriving Nadal of time, giving him difficulty in hitting his forehand with freedom in his own service games, much less Djokovic’s. At 3-all, Djokovic piled on the pressure, going up love-40. Nadal redlined, brute-forcing the court open and bashing an inside-in forehand into the open space to kill an epic rally, but Djokovic broke on the next point. He served the set out at love, 6-4, making a terrifying 78% of his first serves. Despite not really doing anything wrong besides failing to play out of his mind—he hit 10 winners and six unforced errors—Nadal had lost the set convincingly.

As striking as the set had been, what with Djokovic not having played at this level in years, it was a reminder of what the Serb could do to Nadal, not a revelation. We had been here before, just not for a while. The tools were still there: the precise serve, the ruthless returning, the unmatched ability to dodge Nadal’s forehand by consistently hitting backhands down the line. At 2-all in the first set, Nadal missed a smash from right on top of the net, a terrible mistake, and a shocking one from Nadal, whose overhead’s reliability is well-known. In hindsight, though, Djokovic’s level helps explain the miss—Novak was making Rafa so uncomfortable, even that early, that the pressure forced Nadal to go haywire on an easy shot. The matchup remained difficult for Nadal. He was playing at a level that would have beaten anyone else; against Djokovic, he was limited to just 58% of first serve points won in the first set.

There was no letup at the start of the second set. With Nadal serving, Djokovic again began with a forehand winner down the line. Then he lasered a second serve return at Nadal’s feet, the ball ricocheting long off the Spaniard’s racket. Nadal was back in tennis hell, playing a man whose shots seared the lines and never seemed to miss. At love-30, the return again smashed onto the baseline. This time Nadal was able to get it back in play and Djokovic hit long with a rare unforced error, but Nadal’s “vamos” after the rally felt negligible. Even during rallies when Djokovic would offer a rare gift, like that love-30 miss, Nadal’s position felt precarious. He was having to work way too hard to win points. On Nadal’s serve at 1-all, 15-love, Djokovic ran down a perfectly solid inside-out forehand from Rafa and clocked a forehand winner straight down the line from a good ten feet behind the baseline. It was not a shot he or anyone else tended to attempt against Nadal, a shot whose geometry felt like a revelation.

Rattled, Nadal fell down break point at 1-all. Here, finally, he got a bit of help from Djokovic, who missed a second serve return, then another return on his next break point. Nadal held. Recognizing the desperate nature of the situation and how little time he could potentially have left, Nadal immediately committed to an aggressive gameplan, pulverizing any forehand he had half a look at. Serving at 1-2, love-15, Djokovic attacked Nadal’s backhand, then changed things up with a crosscourt backhand, only to see Nadal promptly hit a forehand winner down the line. The shot was low-percentage—hard, bending, a foot from the line—yet Nadal would hit many of them over the course of the match.

Nadal broke for 3-1, then, when Djokovic broke back with a classic god-mode return game including three winners, broke again. His forehand down the line was firing constantly now, sending Djokovic sprinting into the right corner point after point. Nadal was showing off his own return of serve; missiles that had earned Djokovic free points in the first set were now coming back deep. As Novak served down 2-5 in the second set, Nadal, not an aggressive returner by any stretch of the imagination, flicked a second serve return at 93 mph that blew by Djokovic before he could even react.

Nadal’s performance in this match was a perfect example of a player recognizing the extraordinary risk they had to take to win and rising to that absurd standard. With Djokovic being so on song, so penetrating with his returns, there was clearly no other route to a Nadal win besides the Spaniard peaking: he had to consistently make low-percentage attacking shots. Pursuing a gameplan this risky, even for a top player like Nadal, is really effing hard. Over the years, he’s become accustomed to winning most matches while playing relatively safely; he’s so good that even his more central forehands are enough to run through most of his opponents. Going for the lines required fighting against instincts that had been ingrained in him for years. Yet that was what Nadal was able to do—he won the second set on the back of that forehand down the line, which he blasted powerfully yet reliably. His first serve returns consistently landed deep, carrying him to an astonishing 57% of return points won in the second set. Djokovic dipped a little bit, but not by much, Nadal had just wrestled control away from the Serb in the middle of the second set. The 6-3 score belied how difficult the set was. At 5-3, love-15, Nadal won a 19-shot rally that left Djokovic visibly fatigued, and it still didn’t stop him from having to save a pair of break points to serve out the set. Throughout the frame, he saved five of six break points, while converting two of three on his own end. He had tied the match very much the hard way.

The third set took the match to astronomical levels, Djokovic and Nadal meeting on even terms at their best. This time it was Nadal beginning the set with a forehand winner down the line against serve, Nadal holding easily with the momentum behind him. Rafa had weathered a blast of Djokovic’s peak form for the first set and a half; now the question was whether Djokovic could hold up in a prolonged titanic struggle. The answer: he could. For ten games, each player held serve, neither facing a break point or even being taken to deuce. Then, with Djokovic serving at 5-all, Nadal pounced on a forehand down the line and put away an easy volley. At love-15, he played fantastic defense in his backhand corner, then hooked a forehand winner down the line the instant Djokovic hit to his forehand. It was love-30—a huge pressure point, made all the tenser by the fact that Nadal had played phenomenal tennis to gain the advantage, rather than benefitting from Djokovic mistakes. The Serb was going to have to play his best tennis to dig out of the hole, Nadal wasn’t giving him any gifts. The first set had been a display of near-perfect tennis, but this was a test of Djokovic’s will on top of his skill.

At love-30, Djokovic slammed a serve down the T, a near-ace that Nadal could barely clip with his racket. At 15-30, he forced an error with an inside-in forehand. Here, at 30-all, was the biggest point of the match thus far: it would produce game point or break point, no in-between. Djokovic tossed the ball, reared back, and belted an ace down the T, drawing out his grunt in celebration as the ball streaked past Nadal.

“There’s the match player!” cried Andrew Castle, commentating the match. “This has been missing for two years, this chest-beating sort of performance!” Djokovic held serve, roaring a brief celebration as a Nadal backhand flew long. He clenched his fist. He might as well have been holding in his hand that crucial ingredient which allowed him to equal Nadal’s intensity for hours on end and hit aces on big points and play stunning tennis with rarely a dip. He had been out-of-touch with that part of himself since mid-2016, but here, this 5-all game in the third set of the Wimbledon semifinal against Nadal, was confirmation that the connection had been reestablished.

Without that moment, I doubt that Djokovic wins 12 majors in the following five years and change.

The third set went to a tiebreak. Djokovic had to withstand yet more furious tennis from Nadal—he was up 5-3, only to see Nadal close the gap, then win a 23-shot rally to go up 6-5. Djokovic had worked himself into a favorable position in the rally, swiping a short angled crosscourt forehand, but Nadal belted a backhand down the line from way outside the sideline, another ridiculously low-percentage shot, setting him up to float a drop shot winner. Tim Henman criticized Djokovic for not coming to net, but he’d have been passed by Nadal’s backhand regardless of where he was standing. The Serb leveled at 6-all, only to see Nadal rip an inside-out forehand winner against the serve. Djokovic looked at his box helplessly. He’d done nothing wrong, hitting a great backhand down the line earlier in the point, only to fall victim to a moment of Nadal forehand magic.

This was Rafa’s chance: a set point, on serve, for a two-sets-to-one lead. Neither player had been able to overcome that deficit against the other in their previous two five-setters. Djokovic was playing his best again, but if Nadal could rip this set away from him, maybe his confidence would falter. Even if it didn’t, Rafa would have the match on his racket.

If the previous three sets and 51 matches with Djokovic had taught Nadal anything, it was that he needed to play aggressively to win. The base matchup did not favor him. Nadal needed time and Djokovic did not, so Rafa had to be the first to attack, even if the opportunity wasn’t quite as open as he wanted. His success had come when he hit his forehand down the line and took the match to Djokovic; passivity got him killed. So on this point, he simply needed to make the first move—this was his set point, not Novak’s, so a miss was okay, he’d still be alive in the tiebreak. Now was the time to take a chance. That could be an attempt at a massive serve, likely his classic surprise bomb up the tee. It could be a forehand down the line, or a drop shot, or a rush to the net. But he had to take control of the point somehow. Could he do it? He reared back for his first serve.

Nadal chose safety. He made his first serve, but it was a hesitant one, shades of the lackluster first serving from the 2011 U.S. Open final in which he was broken 11 times. While he did hit to Djokovic’s forehand, the ball spun into the middle of the box at 109 miles per hour, a far cry from the 120 mph missile whose meeting with the intersection of the centerline and service line had brought him so many aces in the past. Presented with a comfortable return, Djokovic found depth easily, pushing Nadal back with each groundstroke until the requisite space opened up for a drop shot, Nadal’s court position too distant to possibly reach it. The chance was gone.

Nadal would have one more set point at 8-7 and would narrowly miss a first serve return, the same way he had failed to take his first set point at 6-5. Neither serve was ace-worthy—Nadal got a solid swing on both of them—he just couldn’t get the ball between the lines.

So it fell to Djokovic to deliver the crucial blow. On his second set point, at 10-9, he did what Nadal couldn’t and fully committed to his (admittedly safer) blueprint for success. It was a rally that would have made his 2011 self proud: eight times Djokovic hit a groundstroke, and seven times he hit to Nadal’s backhand in an attempt to break it down. He went again and again to the crosscourt forehand, refusing to lose patience even when the gambit didn’t gain him court position. Finally, Nadal sliced to the backhand and Djokovic hit his trademark backhand down the line, at last overwhelming the Spaniard’s backhand with sheer depth and weight of shot—Nadal’s ball smacked the net. In an instant reminiscent of when he broke serve at 5-5 in the fifth set of the 2012 Australian Open final, Djokovic walked to his chair and did not celebrate.

Now, with a two-sets-to-one lead over a red-hot Rafa Nadal, Djokovic could carry his momentum into the fourth set, hopefully continue his superb serving, and close down this fantastic match in four sets—just after a short break between sets-wait, no, it was time to go home and finish the match the next day. (Thanks, Wimbledon. I wonder if the reason why Roland-Garros refused to interrupt yet another epic match between these two in 2021 was because they learned from your religious adherence to curfew.)

Had the quality dipped violently on the second day, it would have been more than understandable. The first three sets had been stratospheric; playing that well for that long takes a mental and physical toll. Let’s say you’re a writer: replicating that level is a little like writing the climactic scene in your magnum opus, then instead of a break the next day your agent tells you that you have to extend the scene by 40% by sundown, or else your book deal’s off. Plus, Nadal had to sleep on those missed set points, and who knew if Djokovic was battle-hardened enough to play another set-plus at such high intensity?

Such writerly concerns were of no consequence to Novak and Rafa. The first game after the restart, 0-0 in the fourth set with Nadal serving, lasted 16 minutes. On the second point, Nadal ran down an inside-out forehand that pulled him outside the left sideline, then raced all the way back into the deuce corner in time to pass Djokovic with a blazing backhand down the line. At 40-30, Djokovic took a first serve return early, conjuring a diagonal backhand winner at an angle that few other players recognize the existence of, much less try to hit. Down break point, Nadal found himself pinned in his backhand corner—that dreaded position against Djokovic—yet fought out of it with a great crosscourt backhand that forced Djokovic into a defensive sliced forehand, then put away a smash. It was the best game of the match, winner after winner, somehow urgent and feather-light at the same time. Nadal eventually held after saving three break points, carrying the momentum into a break and then a lightning-quick hold. Djokovic would level at 3-all, but Nadal took the next three games from there to send the match into a fifth.

The decider once again saw both players at their best. They traded easy holds. They played a 28-shot rally in the fourth game, won by Nadal after a forehand down the line-drop shot combination left Djokovic’s chest heaving for breath. Nadal saved a break point at 3-4, Djokovic saved two at 4-all. Serving second, Nadal was two points away from defeat multiple times and served his way to safety. The pivotal game arrived with Djokovic serving at 7-all. Nadal was on the prowl—Djokovic was hitting wonderful first serves, but whenever he missed one, Nadal was pasting his seconds. The Spaniard went up 15-40; Djokovic saved both break points, hitting an ace and an unreturnable backhand. Nadal produced a third with a forehand winner down the line, and here was the defining rally of the match, possibly the defining point of the entire rivalry.

Djokovic hit a first serve to Nadal’s forehand, which the Spaniard returned with decent depth. Djokovic bombarded the Spaniard’s forehand with a couple inside-out forehands, then switched to attacking the backhand with a two-hander down the line. From way behind the baseline, Nadal returned an inside-in forehand with a brutally deep counterpunching backhand. It reversed the momentum in the rally; all of a sudden Djokovic was on the back foot and Nadal was charging inside the baseline. He ripped a crosscourt backhand and rushed the net.

At this moment, the pressure on Djokovic couldn’t have been higher. The pass was makeable, to be sure—Nadal’s backhand was stinging but rather central—but if Djokovic missed, Nadal would serve for the match, and the Spaniard hadn’t been broken since the middle of the fourth set. The Serb had just seen his offensive position in the rally get flipped on him. Many players probably would have responded to Nadal’s approach with a rushed, frustrated shank. Djokovic eyed the ball, refusing to give too much ground, then rolled the passing shot crosscourt. He hit it perfectly. Nadal lunged but couldn’t get a racket on the ball.

The game continued at a mindblowing level. Djokovic got to ad-in with a volley winner. Nadal crushed a backhand return to force deuce. Djokovic hit a classic sharp-angled crosscourt backhand winner from a seemingly neutral position, then killed a long rally with a backhand down the line. Nadal, perhaps taking out some frustration from his failed approach shot on break point, demolished a backhand winner crosscourt clocked at over 90 mph. Finally, Djokovic held with a service winner. It was the decisive blow.

Nadal had one last push in him. He overcame his limits yet again at 7-8, digging in for a brutal rally at 15-30: Djokovic was pounding backhands down the line for all he was worth, but Nadal dug them out of the corner time and again until a backhand down the line of his own set up an easy smash. He saved a match point with a drop shot Djokovic couldn’t reach and leveled at 8-all with a pair of huge serves. But from there, Djokovic won eight of the last nine points. Fittingly for the greatest returner ever, he broke Nadal at love to seal the fifth set, 10-8.

Both men finished with 73 winners and 42 unforced errors. Djokovic won 175 points to Nadal’s 171; they had been dead-even before the very last game. It was easily the best Djokovic had played in two years, and you could even argue this was more impressive than any individual win from his dominant 2015, since Rafa’s had likely exceeded any of his opponents’ that year.

I will also forever stand by the opinion that this was the best match Nadal had ever played that he didn’t win. (Unless he plays a better one before he retires, but that feels unlikely.) Bastien Fachan, Big Three guru (check out his book here, French speakers and readers) once said to me on Twitter that Nadal played better in his 2007 Wimbledon final loss to Federer—a great candidate—but to me, the 2018 semi wins out. Nadal was faster in 2007, sure, but had improved every other part of his game by 2018. The later version was more of an offensive dynamo, with a better serve, more aggressive backhand, more polished forehand, and far softer hands at net and on the drop shot. He had pushed Djokovic to a 10-8 fifth set, while he fell 6-2 in the decider to Federer in 2007. And he was locked in a more difficult matchup in 2018—Federer may have been the king of Wimbledon, but Nadal always liked that matchup. Though he lost more comfortably in 2007, he was largely allowed to play the way he wanted to, trying to break down Fed’s backhand with his lefty topspin. Against Djokovic in 2018, Nadal had to contort himself into a new shape and played at a phenomenal level anyway, one that was surely higher than the one that took Nadal to the Wimbledon title in 2010 and maybe even higher than his level at Wimbledon in 2008. He just lost to a marginally better player.

It was the best possible way for Djokovic to mark his return to peak form. What more ruthless test was there than a red-hot Nadal, an opponent who was going for his shots relentlessly, point-in and point-out? Much had changed from the 2008-2009 years, but this had been a vintage performance from Nadal. His forehand down the line was as good as it had ever been. His backhand was a piercing weapon, almost unrecognizable from the dinky two-hander he used to hit in the first years of his career. His serve had improved. Yet Djokovic had just enough answers. The passing shot to save break point at 7-all was up there in his personal pantheon of clutch shots under pressure, only a shade below his 2011 match-point-saving return winner. Like at the 2012 Australian Open, he had been staggered by Nadal’s strongest punch yet managed to win the round anyway. It was quintessential Novak Djokovic—endurance, backboard-worthy defense, beautiful spot serving, and grace under pressure.

As far as the rivalry goes? There’s been no better match. I went into this a bit in my top 10 list a few weeks ago—the consistent quality of this match is simply impossible for any other contest between these two to touch. The 2012 Australian Open final might have had a slight edge in drama and sheer awe projected by the physical feats both players were performing, but in terms of tennis, compared to the 2018 Wimbledon semi, it was an error festival, especially in the first three sets. The 2009 Madrid semifinal had a more electrifying finish, but Nadal took a while to get going in a lackluster first set and a half. The 2013 Roland-Garros semifinal was too up-and-down—if that one was a rollercoaster with a couple big drops and some meandering slower parts, this was a ride with a huge plunge that never let up. Both players just brought it from the word go and never lapsed meaningfully until the final ball was struck.

Djokovic completed the comeback arc by winning the final over Kevin Anderson, 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (3). It was his 13th major title. Historically, though, I think this tournament will be remembered more for the classic semifinal with Nadal. Of their 59 matches, this one was far and away the best. Where before they had been unable to sustain the pulsating intensity of their best tennis for more than a set, here they did it for five sets over two days. Each set was a work of art. The first, a Djokovic masterclass. The second was defined by Nadal’s unparalleled ability to adapt and fight in the face of adversity, even his great rival’s top form. The third, a clash of two players at the very peak of their games. The fourth, highlighted by a 16-minute game in which both players hit every shot in the book. And the fifth, an 18-game affair of mind-boggling feats under pressure until Djokovic finally emerged the marginally stronger. It was a mammoth match. Asked what the physical toll of playing Nadal was like in his press conference, Djokovic laughed. “If I show you my feet, you will understand.”

The victory was symbolic, to be sure, capping Djokovic’s two years of work to get back to the top, but it also had statistical value. Nadal had been within five points of tying the head-to-head, the closest he had been since Djokovic went ahead in early 2016; instead, Djokovic went up 27-25. At the time of the match, Djokovic had three Wimbledon titles to Nadal’s two; at the time of writing, the tally is 7-2 in favor of the Serb. (Djokovic wouldn’t lose again at Wimbledon until 2023.) Instead of Nadal scoring an 18th major—presumably, he’d have beaten Anderson with similar ease to his rival—Djokovic won his 13th, closing the gap to four majors, and seven behind Federer. Djokovic would go on to win Cincinnati, the U.S. Open, and the year-end #1 crown in 2018. All of that world-beating momentum started with this semifinal.

Nadal was surely disappointed at the loss, but seemed to realize he could scarcely have done more outside of an isolated moment or two. His press conference was uncommonly revealing. Asked what the most difficult part of playing Djokovic was, he began, “biggest challenge is I am playing one of the greatest players of the history. Probably for him is something similar.” Nadal recognized that he had played a brilliant match. He was predictably asked if he regretted coming to net on the third break point at 7-all and said that had Djokovic missed the pass, Nadal would have been commended for his bravery. He gave a detailed breakdown of why he did what he did and while he admitted he could have hit a better approach, he stood by the decision to come in. The subtext: too good, Novak.

A fine summation of the match by extension.

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 Thanks so much for reading The Golden Rivalry. This was among the toughest chapters to write—it’s hard to do some of these matches justice. I hope I got close. What better place than the final Djokovic-Nadal five-setter for another awkward-as-hell plug? If you enjoyed this chapter or others, I’m on Venmo at Owen-Lewis-43 and PayPal @thegoldenrivalry and would greatly appreciate anything you’d like to contribute. Everything on this site is free, but donations do help me out a lot, from being able to do fun things when I’m not writing and helping me believe that a job as a writer just might be sustainable somewhere down the line.

I have an idea for another bonus feature that I’d like to write soon, look out for that sometime in the next couple weeks. (It may have something to do with the recent event regarding one-handed backhands.) Until then, we’ll keep chugging along! See you Sunday. -Owen