Djoko outclasses Rafa

No two individuals can at once look so dramatically different and yet remain two facets of the same, as Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal appear to the average tennis fan. The former is tall and wiry; in contrast, Nadal is comparatively short and muscular. Djokovic may not look it, but after two titanic back-to-back clashes — first, in the semi-final against Andy Murray, and later again in the finals — he certainly gives the impression that he can outlast the best Sherpas in the business, going up and down the icy wastes of Mount Everest. Yet, when he loses a point after a long rally he is just as likely to go down on his haunches, gesture to his camp that he badly wants an oxygen tank sent up to the court. In short, he is just as likely to give the average middle-aged executive a superiority complex after a 13-minute stress test workout on the treadmill.

Now Nadal is another matter altogether. He is built like an Indian army reject, Arjun Tank that has been indulging itself rather too gluttonously on armour-plated steel. But when he chases down balls, there is nothing ponderous about his movements. Like a terrier running after foxes, he goes after balls that seem impossibly out of reach and puts them across the net for a winner. Yes, without doubt they both represent the highest essence of tennis in much the same way rasam and sambhar represent the goodness of lentils in a South Indian meal.

At the recent Australian Open, in the battle between lentil clear soup (rasam) and broth (sambhar), rasam deservedly emerged the winner after five hours and 53 minutes of gruelling exchanges between the two. If the scoreline — 5-7 6-4 6-2 6-7 (5) 7-5 in Djokovic's favour — doesn't suggest it was an exceptionally closely fought match, here are some points to ponder.

Djokovic won 193 points in the match to Nadal's 176 — a difference of just 17. When they have played as many points between them as they did (373 in all) over five sets lasting nearly six hours, the win-loss ratio doesn't seem that great.

It took them double the time others took on average to finish a set. Their first set actually took almost the same time as the entire Women's final involving Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azrenka.

The final was the longest in men's singles championship history, beating the previous record by over an hour.

For a match of such titanic proportions there weren't too many ‘what if' situations. True, there was the odd ‘break of service' that gives one player the advantage only to see him surrendering it by conceding a ‘break of service' of his own. So, that is expected. Even the easy put-away ball that wasn't scored off and, thereby, could be counted as a decisive moment in the game, didn't count on closer analysis. For instance, in the seventh game of the fifth and final set, Nadal had a chance to put away a backhand volley for a winner in what was virtually an open court, which would have set him up one point away from consolidating his lead at 5-2 in that set. Unfortunately he hit it wide to level the game score at 30-30 , and eventually lost his service game. And, with it, the service break he had secured earlier. But it must be said that the match might have not even gone to the fifth set when he was trailing 0-40 on his service game at 3-4 in that set. Losing that game would surely have ended the match with Djokovic serving? Nadal not only saves those three break points but reels off another two to bring the set score to 4-4. There wasn't anything quite like that one moment of madness or lapse in concentration that cost Nadal the match.

The reason Djokovic prevailed in the end was something far subtler than a muffed ground stroke or volley by his opponent. Nadal's inherently defensive game wears most opponents out, forcing them to go for that one extravagant shot to end it all. More often than not, that ends up proving costly. But against Djokovic, this has failed in the past, and this occasion was no different. Relentless ground strokes do not bother Djokovic, as he is quite content to trade shot for shot with Nadal. When your ground strokes are at least 10-15 km faster (150 range), as it was in Djokovic's case, it was Nadal who was lapsing into error and giving away points. Also, the Serbian's game had better variety. He approached the net more often, trying to dominate the rally from there. While this tactic did not fetch him results in the same proportion as Nadal's (74 per cent to Nadal's 84 per cent), Djokovic compensated by approaching the net more than one-and-a-half times as Nadal did. That gave him seven extra winning points — not a small advantage, when you consider that a mere 17 points separated the two.

Spiritual gurus and thinkers tell us to take things as they are. But human condition is more often than not a battle within oneself or with adversaries outside. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. For Nadal, at the moment at least, there is nothing like an even-stevens situation with Djokovic, his adversary on the tennis court. The latter has prevailed over Nadal so many times that it is game, set and match Djokovic 7-0!