Rafa had previously won in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. His record is now 52-1 at the Roland Garros. That one defeat came at the hand of Robin Soderling, who beat him in the fourth round in 2009 and then went on to lose a lackluster final to Roger Federer.
The match against Djokovic was less epic than all would have wanted but pretty much what some had been expecting. Rafa dominated the first two sets despite Nole's valiant attempts to counter his serve. All of Nadal's serving games were one-sided, whereas Djokovic's were harder fought, as is typical of when a player is in control of the surface. Nevertheless, the first six games of the match took almost 40 minutes.
Then it rained.
Nadal began to complain that the (light) rain was drenching the balls, thus allowing Djokovic's long shots to travel faster and push him back and out of the court. Play was not suspended and Djokovic took the third set after winning four games in a row. They played on into the fourth set, where Nole again took the first two games, breaking Rafa for the third straight time. Eventually, Nadal managed to convince the chair umpire and the commissioner to suspend play, as the rain had intensified and the clay was slowly turning to mud. As the players walked off, Nadal chewed off the commissioner: "You made us play for an hour in these conditions. We should have stopped an hour ago." Damn right. Play would not resume until today, when Nadal came back from a break down and finished in under one hour. Total match time was 3h 49m.
In my opinion, this goes to prove Nadal's dominance on clay even more. Without the rain, this would have been a three-setter and Djokovic would not have stood a chance. The weather only served to prolong the inevitable and we even came close to a fifth set. That would have been enjoyable, and you could see that the crowd wanted it, but again it wouldn't have changed the basic fact that Nadal is unbeatable on clay.
As for Djokovic, this loss robs him of his own shot at tennis history. After winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the second half of 2011 and the Aussie Open earlier this year, the Serbian was looking to complete a non-calendar-year slam. He would have been the first-ever player to do so in the men's singles and only the fourth player overall (see why here). And as the Roland Garros is the second Major of the year, Nole's hopes of a 2012 calendar-year Grand Slam are also gone. I doubt that Djokovic will ever get another shot like this. All he can hope is to complete a career grand slam by winning the French Open eventually, like Sharapova just did a couple of days ago. But of course, there isn't a clay-machine like Rafa in women's tennis!
No comments:
Post a Comment