Chapter 8: Painful Dominance
Djokovic continued his winning streak against Nadal through the end of 2011. But in the U.S. Open final, Nadal made a stand, and the pair simply ground each other down.
Djokovic’s winning streak halted with a defeat to Federer in the Roland-Garros semifinals. Djokovic was a hot favorite going in, but Federer, eager to reestablish himself as one of the two premier big title threats, came up with a stunning performance to deny Djokovic a first Roland-Garros final, beating him 7-6 (5), 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (5) despite converting just four of 25 break points. Vallejo ranks this loss as one of Djokovic’s most brutal ever. From two sets down, Djokovic stormed back to win the third and even served for the fourth but couldn’t close it out. (To date, Djokovic is 4-0 against Federer in fifth sets, though he has had to save match points in three of them.) Nadal duly and convincingly beat Federer in the final, running away with it 6-1 in the fourth after three tight sets. It was a pocket of disappointment in Djokovic’s sterling 2011; he had broken a lot of new ground during the clay season with those two wins over Nadal, but he had failed to make the most of the momentum at the big one, Roland-Garros. Nadal’s win not only restored some of his momentum, it helped him retain the #1 ranking for a few more weeks.
In the second set of the final against Federer, Nadal won the most emblematic point of their matchup on clay. Down a set and 5-2 in the second set tiebreak, Federer was serving on a must-win point. He bossed Nadal around the court, side to side, finally opening up an empty lane on the left side and approaching the net behind an inside-in forehand into the gap. Nadal was forced to hit a lob on the stretch, seemingly setting Federer up for the finishing overhead smash, but Nadal, still the special defender, got just a bit of extra depth on his lob. Federer had to reach for the smash and didn’t hit it as cleanly as was ideal; Nadal promptly ripped a crosscourt backhand past the Swiss at net. Dominate the entire point against Nadal on clay, then make one slight mistake, and it was curtains.
What would have happened in a 2011 Roland-Garros final between Djokovic and Nadal? The Spaniard has won all three of their finals on the Parisian clay, and in 2011, was 3-0 against Djokovic at Roland-Garros. But at this point in 2011, Djokovic had beaten Nadal four straight times, the last two on clay. His confidence was soaring, his favored patterns against Nadal effective and reproducible. In best-of-five, Nadal would have more time to adjust, and the match would have been played on his favorite court in the world. But the Spaniard’s confidence had been flagging as his recent losses to Djokovic got progressively more lopsided.
I lean towards Nadal in the end—he usually had an extra edge at Roland-Garros, even by his incredibly high standards on a clay court. And Djokovic, who didn’t end up beating Nadal at Roland-Garros until 2015, may not have been quite ready for that leap. (Though by then Nadal had broken the losing streak to Djokovic, he’d go on to beat Novak in Paris in 2012, 2013, and 2014.) In fact, in 2011, Djokovic still had not won a set against Nadal at Roland-Garros. For him to win three in the same match in 2011, to me, seems like a bridge too far. I say that without much conviction given Djokovic’s exceptional level in 2011, though, and there’s little question that the match would have been a titanic struggle. I can’t think of a more interesting hypothetical addition to the Djokovic-Nadal rivalry.
Despite the loss to Federer and missing out on that potentially defining clash with Nadal, Djokovic was unstoppable. He finally wrested the top spot in the rankings from Nadal during Wimbledon (though the reality was that he had been the best player in the world well before that). He and Nadal, almost inevitably, met in the final of the tournament. Interestingly and somewhat bizarrely, many picked Nadal as the favorite going in. In hindsight, truly difficult to uncover the rationale behind this pick. The most obvious reason is that Djokovic was yet to beat Nadal in a best-of-five match, but Djokovic’s heroics in the Rome final after his brutal semifinal with Murray should have dispelled all doubts about his endurance. Nadal had been great on grass for years, but the surface wasn’t going to negate the issues the Spaniard had in the baseline dynamics—in fact, it could even accentuate them, as the time he needed to load up on his groundstrokes was an even rarer commodity on a skiddy grass court.
In any event, the prediction was thoroughly proven wrong as Djokovic crushed Nadal 6-4, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3. The match wasn’t uninteresting, but the main and almost only takeaway was that Djokovic had the upper hand in the matchup with Nadal and wasn’t letting go. The first set had been tight until Djokovic broke Nadal in the 10th game to seal it, and Nadal rolled an errant Djokovic in the third set, but when the Serb was on his game, it was not much of a contest. His brand of offense required so much less time than Nadal’s that he was able to fire away into the corners and grind down Nadal’s backhand with relative ease, while Nadal was on the back foot more often. Like on clay, even when the Spaniard could take the offensive, Djokovic’s defense denied him sometimes, and the fact that those chances were all the fewer on grass only increased the pressure on Nadal. The final felt like a coronation by the end.
Wimbledon had been Djokovic’s childhood dream. He chronicled the 2011 final in his book Serve to Win, and his sharp tactical mind is evident. With Djokovic serving in the first game, Nadal fired off forehand winners down the line on the second and third points to go up 15-30. He looked sharp and willing to attack whenever given the opportunity, a potentially crucial factor. But Djokovic noticed this and resolved not to give him that chance.
“Fair enough,” he wrote in Serve to Win with respect to the pair of forehand winners. “I had to keep him moving wide so he couldn’t get that impossible angle on me.”
What is striking is not necessarily the quote, but Djokovic’s near-perfect execution of his aforementioned tactic. For the remainder of the first set, Djokovic allowed Nadal just one forehand winner from the baseline. In the entire second set, just one more, this one a line-licker after Djokovic had already made several incredible defensive retrievals. Nadal managed a higher tally in the third and fourth sets, but the winner output from his forehand—which, along with Federer’s, was one of the two best on tour—was startlingly low. Djokovic had worked out how to rush that shot so effectively, how to feed it uncomfortable shots so well, that Nadal’s offense was jammed.
Nadal’s forehand was top-class, but the Spaniard liked to dominate with it by hitting safe-but-hurtful shots. Djokovic was putting him in a position where to make offensive headway, he would have to hit risky shots from neutral or even defensive positions, which was not Nadal’s style at all. And having neutralized Nadal’s best shot, Djokovic’s own offense could take full flight. He’d push Nadal back with depth or rush him with pace, then step in and clobber a winner into the corner.
After beating Nadal five times in a row at this point, on all three surfaces, in finals of both best-of-three and best-of-five, Djokovic had emphatically become the best player in the world. Nadal, who had been in the same position a mere six months earlier, was number two, but miles away from the spot Djokovic now resided in.
Like clockwork, Djokovic and Nadal met in the next major final as well. Djokovic’s path to the U.S. Open final was anything but simple—in the semifinals, Federer not only led him by two sets but had two match points on his serve in the fifth set. Djokovic saved the first with a laser-like crosscourt forehand return winner off a Federer first serve (you read that right), saved the second as well, and reeled off four games in a row to win the fifth set 7-5. It was a match that the tennis world could scarcely believe. Federer’s press conference, in which he openly called the return winner a “lucky shot”, said as much. One thing was clear: Djokovic’s confidence was soaring, and he was beginning to pull off escapes that seemed near-impossible with regularity.
On Federer, if the tennis landscape was shifting for Nadal, it had fractured for the great Swiss. He had won 16 major titles, an all-time men’s record, and had been anointed (perhaps prematurely) the GOAT—greatest of all time—after he won his record-breaking 15th in 2009. But he had never been able to beat Nadal regularly, even during his very best years, and now Djokovic was all over him as well, having won four of their five meetings in 2011. Federer might not quite have been the monster he was in 2006: the forehand had gotten slightly worse, his feet a step slower. But by and large, he was still Federer. The improvements Djokovic and Nadal had made were far larger than any dip in Federer’s level. The Swiss, after so many years ruling men’s tennis, now found himself not just second but third. The Big Three era began in earnest in 2011, when Djokovic reached his full world-beating potential. Since the start of that year, Djokovic has won 23 major titles and Nadal has won 13. Federer has won four.
Some Federer fanatics will tell you that it was the Swiss’s old age that kept him from winning more majors, but even deep into his 30s, the Swiss has had his chances in those defining duels against Djokovic and Nadal—at the 2017 Australian Open and 2019 Wimbledon, he even beat Nadal in the late rounds, which he hadn’t been able to do previously since 2007. In the 2019 Wimbledon final, he went toe-to-toe with Djokovic for almost five hours, even playing at a better level from point to point. But he crucially failed to consolidate a lead in the first-set tiebreak, to close strongly at the end of the third set, and most importantly, to convert two match points on his serve (yes, just like the 2011 U.S. Open) in the fifth set. Federer has always had opportunities against Djokovic and Nadal, but more frequently than not he has been denied, and that has been a relative constant even as he ages. At Roland-Garros in 2011 he had broken the duopoly and came close to doing it again at the U.S. Open, but he came up a point short. Things would get worse before they got better.
As in Rome, Nadal had the easier route to the final at the U.S. Open, but again it didn’t help him. Djokovic won 6-2, 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-1 in an astonishing match that lasted four hours and 11 minutes, a seeming impossibility looking at the scoreline. It was convincing in the end—Djokovic had an incredible 26 break points and broke Nadal 11 times—but the rallies were elating in their length, averaging over seven shots. (To get an idea of how ridiculous this is, just imagine how much an ace, essentially a one-shot rally, would reduce the average length of the points in a match.) One game lasted 20 minutes. There were points that beggared belief. One man would go on a rampage, blasting shot after shot a foot from the sideline at high speed, and the other would sprint back and forth, their sliding shoes shrieking on the cement, until the point was neutral again. Despite three of the four sets being lopsided, some called the final the best match ever, which sounds laughable until you watch the whole thing.
Nadal went up 2-0 in the first and second sets, but couldn’t consolidate his leads. That was due to a factor not discussed too much thus far in this book: Djokovic’s return of serve. Djokovic was the best returner in the world—he was able to lash serves back within inches of the baseline and put serves that would be aces against most of the tour back in play. On this day, whether because of the swirling wind or his faltering confidence, Nadal rarely went for big first serves, and he paid for it. At 2-0 in the second set, the Spaniard had several opportunities to hold for 3-0, but each time he had a game point, Djokovic’s return would smack the baseline as if by magic. Each time Nadal surged, Djokovic would stifle his rival’s momentum.
There was one rally in particular that felt defining. In the third set, Djokovic had been up a break early, twice, but Nadal had clawed back to level. The Spaniard was making his last stand, finally committing to doing everything he could to break out of the prison Djokovic had meticulously designed for him. Nadal crushed backhands and went for inside-out and down-the-line forehands, shattering Djokovic’s dominant crosscourt patterns and turning the match into an all-court scrap. Nadal fought all the way to break point on Djokovic’s serve at 4-3. Djokovic took control of the rally early, ramming a vicious crosscourt backhand that pulled Nadal outside the sideline. It came back. Djokovic then pulverized an inside-in forehand that sizzled through the court and landed close to the sideline, pulling Nadal all the way into the other corner. It came back too. Djokovic lined up his next shot and struck it at an extreme angle inside-out with his forehand, sending Nadal racing back over to the first corner. Somehow, it also came back: at the very edge of his sprint, Nadal had slid into a forehand that he managed to loop barely inside the sideline. (The crowd had begun to scream deliriously during this sequence.) Djokovic continued his side-to-side assault, but Nadal coaxed the rally back onto even terms.
Then Nadal hit a backhand down the line that looked to give him a positional advantage, with Djokovic well behind the baseline. Instead, Djokovic barreled a backhand hard and deep crosscourt. Nadal had to scoop the ball off the baseline with his forehand, it landed short, and Djokovic advanced on it and crushed an untouchable backhand winner down the line.
Djokovic walked forward a few steps and held his arms out as if to say, I can do anything. Nadal had never lost such a draining rally, at such a big moment, on such a big stage. It was one of the best points ever played, and it was right in Nadal’s wheelhouse—he had used his excellent defense to weather the fiercest of assaults, then had a chance to go on the offense himself, and he had still been denied. When toweling off before the next point, Nadal winced, and cast a look down to the other side of the court. What have you become, Novak?
In one of his biggest efforts to date, Nadal won the set. Djokovic served for the match at 6-5, but at 15-all, Nadal ran him all over the place with his forehand, then, when Djokovic evened the rally, struck a winner with his own crushing backhand down the line. He earned a tiebreak, then won it decisively, 7-3.
Three times, Nadal had been down a break, and three times, he had hit back. It was not the first time Nadal had won a set against Djokovic in 2011, but it was the first one in which Djokovic played very well and Nadal emerged victorious anyway. The set showed what Nadal would have to do to reverse the recent flow of the rivalry: throw out any hint of safety in his shots, abandon his typical gameplan, and attack whenever remotely possible. An absurdly difficult proposition, yes. But by winning the third set of the U.S. Open final, Nadal confirmed that he was capable of doing just that. It wouldn’t be easy, it might require sets more brutal than any he had ever played, but he could do it. There might indeed be a light at the end of the dark tunnel of 2011.
It didn’t come just yet, of course. The third set was momentous, and brilliant—some called it the best set of tennis ever played—but it broke both players physically. Djokovic had the physio work on his back before the fourth set and lost 20 miles per hour on his first serve for the rest of the match. Nadal faded badly late in the fourth set. It brought back memories of the 2009 Madrid semifinal; both players put so much into every rally that by the time the set was over, neither had anything left. Djokovic, as a flatter ballstriker from the baseline, was able to hit hard and deep and blast his way to the finish line, but it had taken everything he had, despite the match being lopsided in scoreline.
Vallejo marveled at the physicality of the match. “They literally injured each other,” he told me in 2022. “They’re both dead in the fourth set. One can’t move, the other can’t serve. The only thing that saved Djokovic was that he could actually hit the ball flat enough, time it so well that Nadal couldn’t get to anything.”
Even in defeat, Nadal’s resilience had amazed. He had been like a bug in this match, being trampled constantly under Djokovic’s boot, but with a hide was so thick and tough that by the time Djokovic had stomped on him enough times to kill him, the Serb had broken his foot against the pavement.
*****
Both would go on to play more in 2011 despite their bodies screaming at them; Nadal even led Spain to the Davis Cup trophy. Djokovic’s back was compromised, though, making it impossible to sustain the furious pace he had set in 2011. Still, after years of third fiddle, he had rampaged to the top, compiling one of the best seasons in tennis history. Three majors. A 10-1 record over Federer and Nadal. A 42-0 start to the year. Two wins over prime Nadal on clay. A win over Federer from two sets and two match points down. Heading into the offseason, everything looked primed for a glorious 2012. Djokovic would continue to be the gold standard, but after that third set, Nadal looked more capable of challenging him for the throne since Nadal had occupied the top spot himself. Federer and Murray would pounce at the first sign of weakness. Nadal and Djokovic rested up in the offseason, and it was good that they did, because those who thought the U.S. Open final was the climax of their attritional styles were sorely mistaken. The best was yet to come.
Thanks so much for reading The Golden Rivalry. Reliving the U.S. Open final for this chapter was a lot of fun—it’s hard to believe the endurance these two hard, and how brutal they made a four-set match with three fairly lopsided sets. Par for the course for the two best male players ever, I suppose, but always amazing to me. You won’t want to miss the next chapter on Sunday—we’ll be going into a certain five-hour, 53-minute Australian Open final.