Introduction: Birth of a Rivalry
We've gotten used to the Djokovic-Nadal matchup being a special one. The 2007 Miami Masters offered the first taste of the magic.
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2007—Novak Djokovic powered an overhead smash over the net and down the middle third of the court, but with such pace that even Rafael Nadal on the dead run couldn’t scoop it back into play (though he got a racket on it, the ball flying sideways off the frame). Djokovic clenched his fists, looking up to the sky. He sank to his haunches on the purple hard court, one fist touching his forehead. When he straightened up, his face was etched into a mask of agony.
Djokovic had been cruising through this match, the quarterfinal of the Miami Masters tournament. It was his third bout with Nadal, who had beaten him at Roland-Garros the previous year and in the Indian Wells final a mere ten days earlier. Here, Djokovic had his eye on revenge, winning the first set and going up a break in the second. He was going for broke by pulverizing the ball at every opportunity. The enormous pace on his shots not only allowed Djokovic to gain offensive positions, but they also deprived Nadal of time to wind up for a counterstrike. For all Nadal’s firepower, most notably in the fearsome forehand that had already helped lead him to two Roland-Garros titles, he had been largely reduced to a backboard by Djokovic’s mammoth groundstrokes.
With Djokovic serving for the match at 6-4, 5-4, Nadal made his stand. Unable to reliably attack Djokovic, he committed to chasing down as many shots as he could. Nadal was fast, maybe as fast as a tennis player had ever been, and he retrieved shots that common wisdom declared unreachable. Before Djokovic put away that final overhead—which, crucially, was on break point—Nadal had returned two prior smashes from Djokovic, plus a couple enormous forehands. That was why Djokovic had reacted so dramatically to winning the rally: Nadal was forcing him to sustain a level of physical intensity that his body wasn’t yet regularly capable of.
The game became a titanic struggle. Djokovic crushed forehands as hard as he could, forcing them on a bending path through the air, trying to overwhelm Nadal with sheer pace. Nadal, on the full sprint, took a Djokovic smash intended to finish a point and lifted it over his opponent’s head, then bounded to net to poke away an easy volley himself. The crowd gasped in awe, then disbelief. Finally, Djokovic closed out the match with consecutive aces and sank to the ground in exhausted elation. (Watch the end of the video below and you can watch him go through what appear to be the five stages of grief in the last game alone.) For a match that had featured many brutal rallies, the end coming in the form of back-to-back untouchable serves was ironic, but it made sense: only perfect, unanswerable tennis was going to be enough to end proceedings.
Djokovic was just 19, Nadal 20. Each had assembled a mere fraction of the gargantuan resumes they would end up writing. (Djokovic, in particular, had not yet made a single major final, much less won one of the 24 major titles he is now in proud possession of.) Even this early in their careers, both had played countless matches bigger than the one they had just finished, a lowly Masters 1000 quarterfinal. But it didn’t matter. They had stumbled across something rarely seen in tennis during the last game of the match, a world in which every single point brought the promise of a highlight-reel-worthy rally. A world in which each player wanted to win more than anything, yet exactly as much as the opponent.
Nadal and Djokovic would play 56 more matches after that 2007 Miami quarterfinal. They would play unimaginably close five-setters and unthinkably brutal straight-setters. They would do their deadly dance on hard, clay, and grass courts. They would mash each other’s hearts into pulp during devastatingly important matches, then force their faces into smiling masks for post-match handshakes and hugs. (Sometimes with more success than other times.) They would push and extend the boundaries of what was physically and mentally possible on a tennis court.
One of the greatest rivalries in sports history had been born.
Thanks so much for reading the introduction to The Golden Rivalry. I almost hate to stop this installment here, because the first chapter is one of my favorites—we’ll cover the rivalry before the 2007 Miami Masters, including Djokovic’s infamous press conference after his 2006 Roland-Garros loss. We’ll also talk about what made young Nadal so insanely hard to beat on clay, with a focus on the 2008 Hamburg semifinals. Subscribe to get it right in your inbox on Sunday. I hope to see you then! -Owen
Setting the scene very nicely! Will have to look up that final game
Nice... for me a large part of this third encounter, is that it came hot on the heels of their second, and how Novak managed to turn the tables. Nadal never would win Miami, and never enjoyed the success there he attained in Indian Wells. IW is infamously slow, prompting Medvedev's great line about being a hard court specialist. Mind you, even in the Indian Wells highlight reel above, we do see some signs that Novak is going to nail Rafa with the down the line forehand to the huge area of the court Rafa likes to give up knowing his speed, defence and forehand capabilities. Arguably, it would be his undoing, though, in the match up with Novak on a hardcourt.