Chapter 7: Kryptonite
From 2006 to 2009, Nadal went a perfect 9-0 against Djokovic on clay. In 2011, an improved Novak took it to Rafa in Madrid and Rome.
Even when Federer had been dominating tennis between 2004 and 2007, Nadal on clay was as difficult as an opponent could get. The Spaniard had an 81-match winning streak on the surface that Federer broke in 2007, then multiple streaks of more than 30 matches after that. He had full seasons in which he simply didn’t lose on clay—2006, 2010, 2012 (if you don’t count the blue clay experiment in the latter). Federer got six shots at Nadal in Paris over the course of his career, twice in the semifinals and four times in the final, and he lost all of them. The first three, 2005 through 2007, were nearly identical matches. They would split the first two sets, the third would have moments of tension, then Nadal would win the final two sets and the match wouldn’t feel particularly close by the end.
For years, Djokovic looked to be in the same boat, even though he didn’t share Federer’s Achilles’ heel, the one-handed backhand that Nadal forced him to hit at head-height. Djokovic could sometimes go toe-to-toe with Nadal from the baseline, but he was susceptible to both his physical letdowns and Nadal’s bursts of magic. Sometimes in a close match, almost inexplicably, Nadal would run off a series of stunning shots, leaving his opponents totally helpless. He wouldn’t have to do it often, his safest tennis being enough to beat most rivals comfortably, but when a match got tight, he could jump to a higher plane. He had done it to Djokovic in the 2008 Hamburg semifinals and the 2009 Madrid marathon.
Djokovic was almost always competitive with Nadal on clay, but remained the loser in each meeting. Take the 2009 Monte-Carlo final, which could easily have had its own chapter in this book had they not played the far more brutal match in Madrid mere weeks later. After losing the first set, Djokovic hit back to win the second 6-2, then began the third playing brilliantly, earning a break point in the first game of the decider. He stayed patient, staying with Nadal in an interminable 38-shot rally. Djokovic managed to open up the court, then approached the net behind a solid backhand down the line and feathered a beautiful drop volley on the stretch. From way behind the baseline, Nadal made a beeline for the ball, got there, and slid into a perfect crosscourt dink that sailed past Djokovic for a winner. Djokovic sank to the clay in despair. The first three games of the third set, impossibly, lasted 41 minutes. Djokovic had fought to get back on serve, breaking Nadal in an epic game to get to 1-2. He looked set to continue giving Nadal hell, the third set still being in its infancy, but his legs were shot, and Nadal won the next four games easily to close out the match.
That was the story of the rivalry on clay. Djokovic could and would do amazing things, but it was never enough to get a win because Nadal would do amazing things on every point. Novak lost their first nine matches on the dirt, all played in a four-year span. If that isn’t demoralizing, I don’t know what is. Djokovic had pushed his limits (remember that Madrid match) and played matches longer and more tiring than anyone in their right mind would want to play, and he was winless. How was he supposed to approach future matches with Nadal on clay, knowing that his best tennis might not even be enough to win, and without it he would surely get crushed?
All the challenges of playing Nadal were heightened on clay. He was a phenomenal defender on all the surfaces, but on clay he would slide all over the place, getting back in position from way outside the sideline almost before you realized he had even left the middle of the court. While his topspin-loaded forehand could bounce high anywhere, on clay it exploded off the ground, forcing opponents to take it on the rise—an extremely risky proposition—or hit shots from uncomfortably high up, reducing the pace they could get on the ball. Nadal returned well everywhere, but on clay he could stand way back as the gritty surface dragged at the ball, slowing it down enough for him to be able to return practically any serve. He’d often return flat bombs down the T with his arm fully outstretched, barely getting a racket on the ball, yet somehow would get the ball close to the opposite baseline. The clay surface simply enhanced all his considerable strengths. When I was in fourth grade, there was a craze around a mobile fighting game called Infinity Blade. The most difficult opponents in the game took several hits to bring down, but if they touched you even once, you lost all your life immediately. Playing Nadal on clay must have felt like that: no shortcuts and no margin for error. You had to be excruciatingly precise to ensure every shot landed where it should—you could outplay him for an hour, then leave a single ball to the forehand a little too short, and Nadal’s ensuing winner down the line would leak all the air out of an opponent’s balloon.
Djokovic and Nadal met in the final of the Madrid Open in 2011. (Nadal had beaten Federer in the semifinals, who was starting to regularly fall to one of his two rivals in the last four of tournaments.) Djokovic’s winning streak was still intact, and with his two wins over Nadal that year, his odds were getting better and better in the matchup. Still, this was clay, a surface on which Nadal had not lost since 2009. Early on, though, the warning signs for the Spaniard were loud and clear. Djokovic had equaled Nadal physically in Miami, but he was yet to really implement the tactics of getting the ball to Nadal’s backhand whenever possible and cutting out the slice entirely. He had used them at times, and they had worked, but it didn’t seem like Djokovic totally grasped their effectiveness until later in the year. In Madrid, though, he came out of the gates hard and fast. His deep returns of serve gave him time to initiate baseline patterns of his choosing, then he would either target Nadal’s backhand or hit with pace and depth to the forehand, pinning Nadal on that side of the court before unloading a winning shot to the backhand side.
Djokovic’s relentless pestering of Nadal’s backhand paid dividends. It was no secret that it was smart to avoid Nadal’s forehand, but the backhand wasn’t really known to break down. Nadal could almost push the ball back sometimes and his opponent would eventually lose patience, or Nadal would come up with a great point-ending shot from that side. Djokovic took the tactic to another level, though. If he hit to Nadal’s backhand five times and the ball came back, he would hit there a sixth time, or he would hit aggressively enough to the forehand to ensure Nadal couldn’t attack him on the next shot. Nadal was finding himself having to hit eight, ten, twelve backhands in a single rally, which he could do, but wasn’t accustomed to doing and didn’t particularly want to be doing. His backhand was a good shot, but it was the little brother to his forehand, the stepping stone he used to set up the killer drive. When Nadal did get the upper hand, Djokovic would chase down his fizzing groundstrokes tirelessly. It wouldn’t always get him back in rallies, but he covered the court in ways that no one besides Nadal himself had before, and it made the Spaniard uncomfortable. He would have to hit shots that were previously good enough to end a point immediately four or five times.
Djokovic’s refusal to hit a slice hurt Nadal’s ability to finish points as well. Not only could he hit deep backhands from incredibly defensive positions, he was fast enough to hit topspin or flat forehands when Nadal attacked his forehand corner. Time and again, Nadal would attack with a forehand down the line, and Djokovic would manage to loop it back deep to Nadal’s backhand. This actually exposed a microscopic hole in Nadal’s game: while his backhand could be deadly when he wound up on it, he couldn’t really hurt Djokovic when the ball came deep to his backhand, and his backhand down the line was his least reliable shot. So even if Djokovic pulled himself way out of position to neutralize a forehand down the line, Nadal would often hit the ensuing backhand centrally, or if he hit it down the line, it wouldn’t have much pace on it, giving Djokovic time to run back over and even up the rally. The weakness was tiny, and against 99% of opponents, it wouldn’t have been apparent at all. But against Djokovic, the lack of a killer backhand down the line was starting to stall Nadal’s offensive sieges.
Nadal’s famous forehand down the line, too, couldn’t fire at full effectiveness if it wasn’t given time to load up. That shot is at its deadliest when Nadal has time to take a full swing, generating as much topspin as possible and measuring his target to the centimeter. When the Spaniard tries the shot without the necessary milliseconds, it’s much more of a crapshoot; it can land inside the line or several feet beyond it.
Djokovic would still miss shots occasionally, sure, but his ironed-out baseline game and his improved fitness put Nadal in a tricky position. Rafa couldn’t play as safely anymore since longer rallies didn’t necessarily favor him—they were now a coin flip, and sometimes even tilted the balance towards Djokovic. He had to attack more frequently, and while he was an aggressive player, aiming for the lines immediately wasn’t his style. He preferred to build points slowly and methodically. Against Djokovic, though, Nadal risked losing control of rallies if he played his standard game. It took him some time to completely realize that a full overhaul might be necessary.
And Djokovic’s tactics were working to perfection in Madrid. With the knowledge of how he had outplayed Nadal in Indian Wells and Miami fresh in his mind, he was able to come out of the gates lightning fast, playing better than he had in either of those two wins. He slid into a perfect crosscourt backhand passing shot. His wide serve opened up the court for a forehand winner down the line. He powered hard crosscourt backhands into Nadal’s forehand, then changed direction seamlessly, hitting the line at will. The games ticked by: 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0. Djokovic was barely making unforced errors, putting Nadal in the very position the Spaniard tended to put his opponents in: to win a single point, he had to hit several quality shots.
In the moment, it had likely felt like Nadal was playing peak Djokovic at Indian Wells and Miami, but Novak had somehow improved further since. Nadal had been close in the prior two losses to Djokovic, especially in Miami, a match he was two points away from seizing. And those were on hard court, a surface that suited Djokovic’s game more than Nadal’s. Yet all of a sudden, Nadal was looking completely overmatched against Djokovic on his own best surface. How far could Djokovic go, if he had made so much progress in so little time?
It marked a sea change in Nadal’s career. Even when he was ranked below Federer, Nadal had been able to beat the Swiss with relative consistency. Nadal had struggled with players like Nikolai Davydenko and David Nalbandian in the past, but they hadn’t really been consistent enough at the highest level to pose a serious problem. Djokovic was not Nadal’s first rival, but he was Nadal’s first tormentor.
Djokovic came down from the heavens, and Nadal, always the fighter, saved numerous set points en route to evening the first set of the Madrid final at 5-all. But Djokovic ran off the next two games to win it 7-5, and in a way, this was even more worrying for the Spaniard. Nadal falling way behind in a set on clay only to recover it at the end was nothing new—you remember those sets against Federer at Hamburg in 2008—but here Djokovic had taken Nadal’s classic comeback punch and stayed on his feet. On the rare occasions when Nadal’s tennis failed him in the past, his resilience could still crack opponents. He wouldn’t get demoralized, he would stay engaged on every point, and eventually, his opponent would falter from his competitive presence—but Djokovic didn’t.
Nadal kept the Madrid final close, because there are times when his forehand is unanswerable even if your name is Novak Djokovic, and the Serb made some errors himself. Still, the eventual scoreline of 7-5, 6-4 probably undersold the degree to which Djokovic had outplayed the defending champion. The last game, played on Nadal’s serve, saw Djokovic vaporize two crosscourt backhand winners, one on the return and another at a seemingly impossible angle from a neutral position in the rally. The way he swung at the ball was striking, almost like someone standing on the other side of the court had violently yanked an invisible string to pull the ball to its unreachable destination. Djokovic had hit eight consecutive backhands during the point, typically Nadal’s dream—invariably on clay, his spinny forehands would earn shorter and shorter replies until Rafa could pummel a winner or the opponent missed the court. With Djokovic, the backhands consistently carried punishing depth and weight.
On the final point, Djokovic and Nadal stood and emptied their arsenals at one another, the rally going 28 shots, and Nadal was the one to blink first, erring on a slice backhand down the line. The Miami final, a match that could have gone either way, felt like a distant memory. Djokovic had engineered his game to eat Nadal’s alive.
Djokovic was opening a gap between himself and Nadal, but the pair was also starting to pull further away from the tour. They met in yet another final in Rome, and despite Djokovic’s sudden and increasingly firm grip on the rivalry, Nadal seemed to have the advantage heading into this go-around. That was because Djokovic had had his closest shave with a loss in 2011 since—and maybe including—the Miami final. Andy Murray had dragged the Serb to the brink in the Rome semifinal in a series of exhausting rallies, serving for the match at 5-4 in the third set. He got to 30-all, but Djokovic hit the accelerator from there to get to a tiebreak, at which point he tortured Murray repeatedly with delicate drop shots. On weary legs, Murray made game attempts to get to them, but found himself ground down in the 7-2 tiebreak loss.
Djokovic celebrated the win with animalistic screams, reaffirming yet again that he had spirit to match his world-beating skill, but one could easily assume he would be gassed from the 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (2) match. It had lasted for almost three hours, surely leaving him in condition for a Nadal match on clay with less than 24 hours’ rest. Nadal, who had a comparatively dainty semifinal win, looked primed to end the mounting losing streak to Djokovic. The clay in Rome took his topspin better than Madrid; he was even more dominant there than in the Spanish capital.
If anything, though, Djokovic was better in Rome than he was in Madrid. This final was intense, it was intense from the very first ball, it was intense during points and between points. Both players absolutely blanketed the court with their defense, making gets that not only reset points but made no logical sense, because those gets had never been made before. A truly hallucinatory exchange took place with Nadal serving at 3-4, 15-all in set one: Djokovic hit a great inside-in backhand return, which Nadal somehow nailed onto Djokovic’s baseline with a forehand down the line he struck while running backwards. Pushed back, Djokovic found himself on the sharp end of a Nadal forehand onslaught; he made a wild sprint to get back an inside-out thunderbolt and had to run so far outside the lines as to come within a step of running into a line judge. He did make the get, lifting a deep lob into the air. Nadal hit a baseline overhead and followed it into the net, but Djokovic anticipated his drop volley, lobbing the ball over Nadal completely this time. Nadal tore back towards the baseline and got around the ball quickly enough to toss up his own lob, which was deep enough to force Djokovic to hit his smash down the middle. Nadal hit hard and straight to Djokovic’s backhand, Djokovic volleyed down the middle, and Nadal lined up an inside-out backhand passing shot but missed it. The rally was played at an utterly manic speed; each player’s legs had blurred as they raced for a seemingly unreachable shot. It was tennis that simply didn’t exist ten or even five years earlier—the athleticism and precision with which each of them moved was off the charts.
The match continued in that vein, with Nadal and Djokovic hitting few clean winners due to the other’s stifling defense. The rallies were long—in what would prove to be the penultimate game, a Tennis TV chart showed that of the 48 rallies that had lasted for at least eight shots, each player had won 24. Djokovic was doing his best to pick apart Nadal’s backhand, firing his forehand to that side time and again. He found some alarming angles with his crosscourt forehand, including one at 3-all, 30-15 in the first set that seemed to bend the air as it rolled through the side of the court for a winner. Nadal’s backhand was unaccustomed to such harassment and misfired or landed short far too often.
Djokovic looked to have mastered the dimensions of the tennis court. He was running down Nadal’s meanest crosscourt angles and punching backhands three-quarters of the way to Nadal’s baseline, getting them deep enough that Nadal had to adjust rather than just continuing the assault. He dinked short volley winners. He blasted forehand winners down the line after opening up the court. In this Rome final, you could almost hear Nadal trying to formulate a more successful gameplan. He was scything forehands as always, but what could he do when his intended killer blow didn’t take Djokovic out? He would blast a down-the-line forehand, then wheel way over to his backhand side to crack the next one inside-in for a winner. He would hit it well, and it would come back. What do I do now? At times, Nadal seemed positively clueless. He tried a few bizarre moonballs to Djokovic’s backhand, as if trying to slow the gathering storm on the other side of the net. But the ball landed short and Novak would gleefully pounce with crosscourt backhand winners each time. Djokovic had his hands on Nadal’s throat.
Nadal’s defense and forehand hailstorms made him a massive nuisance—the final score of 6-4, 6-4 is a terrible indicator of what kind of match this final was—but when Djokovic was at his best in this match, Nadal couldn’t stop him.
Even as Djokovic won the matches with increasing frequency, he and Nadal were starting to play points the likes of which had never been seen before. A rally in the second set of the Rome final went 28 shots, ending with Nadal giving up the chase on a Djokovic forehand winner that clipped the back of the baseline. And these weren’t just any 28-shot rallies—they swung at each ball like it was their last, and still couldn’t easily hit winners, both players expertly resetting points from defensive positions.
With these two on the court, tennis was becoming as athletic a competition as it had ever been. The sport was evolving before everyone’s eyes. Nadal on clay was the gold standard, and indeed Nadal had been the general gold standard in 2010 after deposing Federer. Yet now someone was beating Nadal regularly. The peak level on the ATP kept going up with Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic involved.
And Djokovic was atop the heap in 2011. Nadal had played pretty well in the Madrid and Rome finals. Not his very best, maybe, though that had never stopped him from beating anyone on clay before. It had taken five long years, but Djokovic’s brash assertion at Roland-Garros in 2006—that as good as Nadal was on clay, he was not unbeatable—had proven to be correct. Djokovic had dethroned the King of Clay.
Thanks so much for reading The Golden Rivalry. These past few chapters have been a lot of fun to write—the tactical dynamics between these two are endlessly fascinating to me. On Wednesday: how Djokovic imposed his dominance further yet in the 2011 Wimbledon and U.S. Open finals. If you think the tennis can’t get any better, just wait until we get to the latter. Can’t wait to see you then. -Owen