Rarely have the reviews for a tennis match been revised as rapidly and
drastically as those given to the 2012 Australian Open men’s final.
Immediately after Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal finished their
exhausted, well-past-midnight, post-match speeches inside Rod Laver
Arena, a hushed question began to be asked in the press room next door:
“Was this the greatest tennis match of all time?”
Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated, author of Strokes of Genius, about
the last GMOAT, the 2008 Wimbledon men's final, wondered on Twitter if
that match had been surpassed, and if he had written his book too soon.
Steve Flink, a tennis historian who was about to release a book called The Greatest Tennis Matches of All Time, added
a last-minute chapter about Nole-Rafa Down Under. He listed it as the
seventh best in history, ahead of such esteemed epics as Pancho
Gonzalez’s two-day win over Charlie Pasarell at Wimbledon in 1969 and
the year-end shootout in 1996 between Pete Sampras and Boris Becker in
Hannover, Germany. Meanwhile, Djokovic, who won 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5),
7-5, told Nadal on the trophy stand that, “We made history.” Afterward,
he posed with the match clock, which read 5:53. It was the longest Grand
Slam final ever, and the longest match in Australian Open history.
Djokovic and Nadal seemed to have played one for the ages that night in
Melbourne.
Within a few days, though, there was dissension in the tennis ranks.
That number, 5:53, the doubters said, was nothing to be awed by; the
match was only that long because Novak and Rafa took too much time in
between points. As for the style of play, it was “brutal” rather than
brilliant, and the endless rallies only proved that nobody knows how to
get to the net anymore. Djokovic-Nadal was suddenly a symbol of
everything that was wrong with modern men’s tennis, a harbinger of bad
things to come. By the end of the year, many of the sport’s aficionados
had tossed the Aussie Open men’s final into the “overrated” bin.
I can see both sides of this story. I wouldn’t put Nole-Rafa in my 10
best matches of all time, but I wouldn’t call it overrated, either. Yes,
it took too long; ESPN’s Kamakshi Tandon calculated that if
player had kept to his allotted 20 seconds between points, the match
would have been 70 minutes shorter. Chair umpire Pascal Maria mistakenly
waited until the second set to warn them about slow play. No matter how
good the tennis, it’s too much to ask fans to sit through nearly six
hours of it to find out who wins. And yes, neither player served and
volleyed at all. Djokovic, in one of the year’s best lines, even
apologized to Rod Laver himself for it in his winner’s speech. “We are
running around the baseline,” he said to the 73-year-old legend, who was
in the stands. “I’m sorry about that.”
But I don’t agree that this was dull, or even one-dimensional, tennis,
or that today's players should be criticized for being “physical,” as if
that’s somehow not in the proper genteel tennis tradition. What I think
the doubters really missed in this match was the presence of Roger
Federer. I like Federer-Nadal and Federer-Djokovic matches as well; as I
wrote last week, I still think Roger-Rafa is the most entertaining
match-up of them all. But Nadal and Djokovic always put on their own
unique show. It’s physical, it’s noisy, it takes a long time, but to
this tennis fan’s eyes, it’s gutsy and graceful, too.
Rafa-Nole in Oz was an Epic, with all of the winding drama, technical
proficiency, and self-indulgent lulls that we associate with that genre.
Here’s a look back at 22 minutes out of the original 353. The
dissenters should be happy: Through the magic of YouTube, there’s no
time between points at all.
*****
Watching these two rally for the first time in six months, I wonder if
it’s the simple fact that one player if a lefty and the other is a
righty that keeps them from getting boring to me. Sometimes Djokovic and
Andy Murray, both righties, can look a little too similar in their
baseline encounters. Rafa and Novak are always distinct, the spin of
their shots always hooking against each other.
*****
“Vintage Nadal,” we hear one of the Aussie commentators say after Rafa
stretches for a get, puts the ball at Djokovic’s feet, and wins the
point with a backhand pass. During the clay stretch last spring, Tennis
Channel commentator Chris Wilkinson pointed out that this is an
underrated skill of Nadal’s. It’s not just that he gets to balls you
think he can’t get, Wilkinson said, it’s that he also puts them in
difficult places for his opponent. It’s true here, and there’s no better
example of it than a shot we looked at last week: the lob that Nadal
dropped on the baseline when he was down break point in the final game
against Federer in the semis in Australia.
*****
Down a break point in the first set against Djokovic, Nadal tries to go
up the middle with his first serve. This is a standard play of his
against Federer; after serving 20 straight times out wide to Federer’s
weaker backhand in the ad court, he’ll cross him up by sending one down
the T on a crucial point. That doesn’t work against Djokovic, who
doesn’t have an obvious weaker wing to attack. When Rafa goes down the T
here, Djokovic is all over it with his return.
*****
During this match, I kept thinking about the parallel—or
triangular—dynamics between Nadal-Federer and Djokovic-Nadal. This is
what I wrote afterward:
“Nadal uses his high, heavy, lefty forehand to Federer’s one-handed
backhand as his fail-safe backup. Djokovic uses his high, heavy,
forehand to Nadal’s weaker backhand as his fail-safe backup.
Against Djokovic, Nadal, so sure of his game plan against Federer,
appears to have little idea how to construct points or where to start.
Rafa can’t identify a weak spot, because there isn’t one. In some ways,
Djokovic, who is best on hard courts and whose shots move through the
court much more easily, returns Nadal to his early days as a clay-court
specialist.
Nobody can exploit Nadal's biggest weakness, his serve, like
Djokovic, who owns the best return in the game. Rafa was so amazed by
this shot that he burst out in praise of it tonight, without being
asked. 'Is something unbelievable how he returns, no? His return is
probably one of the best of history.'
When Federer plays Nadal, Federer’s fans ask, 'Why isn’t he more
aggressive? Why doesn’t he do this, or that, or something else?' It
looks like he should be winning. When Nadal plays Djokovic, Nadal’s fans
ask the same exasperated questions. It’s not so easy. Djokovic hits
with deceptive weight and accuracy, and he’s better than anyone at
forcing Nadal to hit backhands. He’s always going to have the advantage
when he does that.
When Nadal plays Federer, Rafa can play his game while his opponent
must find a solution. When Nadal plays Djokovic, the roles are
reversed. It's Nole's who's comfortable, and Rafa who's searching.”
*****
The first set alone has at least four momentum shifts, but the match is
won by Nole, and lost by Rafa, in the final game of the second set,
with Nadal serving at 4-5. Rafa had just broken Djokovic at 5-3; it
appeared as if he might come back to steal the second set and build a
seemingly insurmountable lead. At 30-30, though, Djokovic hits a
brilliant backhand winner. At 30-40, Nadal double faults. It’s one set
each.
At this point, the head-to-head between these two kicks in. Djokovic
had won their last six matches, and it shows. He’s full of confidence
through the third and most of the fourth sets, while Nadal is as
disconsolate as I've ever seen him. With Rafa down 3-4, 0-40 in the
fourth, the camera pans from Djokovic to the champion’s trophy. It’s
almost his.
*****
It’s amazing to hear Mats Wilander urge Nadal to go for winners earlier
in points, because Rafa can’t hang in the long rallies against
Djokovic. I never thought I would hear those words spoken about an
opponent of Nadal’s.
*****
Still, there are at least two more twists to go in this saga. Nadal
saves all three break points, holds for 4-4, forces a tiebreaker, and
comes back to win it 7-5. Djokovic got tight trying to finish the match
off, and when Nadal executes a spinning forehand winner early in the
fifth set, it looks like he’s going to come back for what might have
been his most unlikely, and greatest, victory.
Nadal breaks for 4-2. I remember the roar from the crowd when he hit a
forehand winner on the first point of that game. The Aussies were ready
to push him across the finish line. Then it was Rafa’s turn to get
tight. We miss the key shot here—at 30-15, Nadal ran forward for a
simple backhand pass; even Djokovic seemed ready to concede the point.
Instead, Nadal pushed the ball wide. He never recovered.
From there a nervous Rafa retreated farther behind the baseline and
went to his weaker, safer, floating slice backhand. It was never going
to work, and Djokovic methodically took advantage. Still, there was
tremendous tennis to be had all the way to the end. At 4-4 in the fifth,
Nadal won a 32-stroke rally that put Djokovic on his back.
*****
The physicality of the match should only make us credit Djokovic’s
achievement more. Two nights earlier he had beaten Andy Murray 7-5 in
the fifth; now he had done it again.
Rafa walked to the net looking crushed, but he came through with one of
the best loser’s press conferences I’ve ever heard. Here’s what I wrote
about it at 6:00 that morning:
"I wondered how Nadal would get that missed pass out of his mind. I
wondered if he would break down in tears on the trophy stand.
We got none of that. What we got instead were words that spoke to
why you play the sport in the first place—for matches like this, even
when you lose them. In my favorite moment of the evening, Rafa raised
and shook his second-place plate with sad pride.
'When you are with passion for the game,' Nadal said, 'when you are
ready to compete, you are able to suffer and enjoy suffering, no?'
But it isn’t just a feeling you have on a tennis court, and it
isn’t something, in Rafa’s mind, that only star athletes can understand.
It’s there for anyone who tries for something greater.
'I don’t know if I express it very well,' he went on, 'but is
something that maybe you understand. So today I had this feeling, and is
really a good one. I enjoyed. I suffered during the match, but I
enjoyed all the troubles that I had during all the match.
'I enjoyed. I tried to be there, to find solutions all the time. I
played a lot with my heart and lot with my mind, that’s something that
is nice to be around, and [it’s not just about] tennis.'
*****
Nole was gracious in his winner’s speech, turning to Nadal to tell him,
“We made history.” The words made sense, because this match was as much
about sports, and what they put you through, as it was about winners
and losers.
Before he got up there, Djokovic had torn his shirt off and screamed.
Was it too much? Some thought so. But after what he had been through to
win, I could understand it. He had played tennis for nearly six hours.
He had outlasted one of the sport’s greatest lasters. And it was 2:00 in
the morning.
Nole vs. Rafa may have been a flawed gem, but its mix of the balletic
and the brutal made it a fitting monument to the era. It was a GSOAT:
one of the greatest struggles of all time.
Source:
http://www.tennis.com/news/2012/12/all-nighter/45732/#.UNPEuaya-LI
Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesRafael Nadal has had a long struggle with his knees. But this time around, it seems a little more worrisome. 
Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesRafael Nadal has had a long struggle with his knees. But this time around, it seems a little more worrisome. 
