Djokovic finds old hunger for Nadal contest
Serbian has regained form and feisty nature Winner of semi-final will be firm favourite for title
Andy Murray might not be hitting his signature passing shots at Wimbledon this year, but he made a big call from the BBC studio instead. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Novak [Djokovic] went on to win this tournament,” said Murray on Tuesday, at a time when everyone else was banging on about a repeat of the 2008 final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
Today we will discover whether Murray can claim bragging rights over his fellow pundits. Yes, there are two more days of Wimbledon to be played. But with a pair of relative novices in John Isner and Kevin Anderson playing the first semi-final, the winner of today’s clash between Nadal and Djokovic will go into Sunday as an almost unbackable favourite.
The narrative is intriguing, because Djokovic has been a man of many personalities this year. He started 2018 in politician’s mode, arguing for a new union to represent the interests of male tennis players. Then he underwent an operation that cleared some scar tissue out of his right elbow and seemed to extract much of his motivation with it.
When Djokovic returned at the two big American hard-court tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami, he was oddly flat and listless. Defeats against Taro Daniel and Benoit Paire left him nursing three straight defeats on the tour for the first time since 2007.
This was a strange thing to see, because he used to be known as the feistiest man in tennis. A Djokovic without inner fire had seemed as unthinkable as the Today programme without John Humphrys, or Italy without pasta. But since the start of the grass-court season, some of the old devil has returned. Over the past week, Djokovic has whinged about the All England Club’s scheduling policy, partisan British fans and even the imminent arrival of a shot-clock in elite tennis.
“I like to see him reacting to being booed by the crowd like he was this year,” said Murray during his BBC appearances this week. “It helped his performance, it was a positive thing. He is really pumped at the end of matches. Like Serena Williams he has not been in the latter stages so much recently but I think he is back to where he needs to be.”
Djokovic is likely to find himself cold-shouldered by the crowd once more this afternoon, given Nadal’s popularity here. During Wednesday night’s magnificent quarter-final on Centre Court, Nadal chased a Juan Martin del Potro smash so far beyond the sideline that he ended up vaulting the courtside barrier. When he kissed the hand of the lady he landed on, she looked up at him with adoring eyes.
Nadal has never stayed so late in London in his life. He has not been a serious factor at Wimbledon since the date change in 2015, which saw the whole tournament move back a week in the calendar. Indeed, he failed to reach the quarter-finals here between 2011 and 2018 – a statistic that seems extraordinary in
the light of his near-flawless performances over the past ten days.
But then this year’s Wimbledon is so different. The sun has baked these courts into green trampolines, thus assisting not only Nadal – who hates having to bend his famously cranky knees – but the pair of big servers on the opposite side of the draw.
Nadal was obliged to make a tactical shift midway through Wednesday’s quarter-final, as del Potro’s forehand proved even more potent than his own. He began rushing the net more often than Kylian Mbappe, enhancing his own unexpected status as the tournament’s most effective volleyer.
At the net, Nadal’s success rate of 81 per cent exceeds even Federer’s 77, from almost exactly the same number of points. At the baseline, though, Djokovic has been peerless, winning a tournament-high 60 per cent of rallies.
We think of Nadal as a grinder, but his chances today could depend on his ability to improvise.