It has been a fortnight of first for Lucas Pouille as he heads into the semifinals of the Australian Open on Friday night.
Pouille had never previously won a single match at the Aussie Open (0-5 lifetime). He had never reached a Grand Slam semifinal. He also had not won a match this season (0-4 at the Hopman Cup and Sydney International). But with a new team around him–led by coach Amelie Mauresmo–it has all turned around for Pouille from completely out of nowhere. The 31st-ranked Frenchman has advanced this fortnight with victories over Mikhail Kukushkin, Maximilian Marterer, Alexei Popyrin, Borna Coric, and Milos Raonic.
Now he gets another first: Novak Djokovic–whom the 24-year-old has never faced–in the semifinals.
“I always thought he’s a great, quality player,” Djokovic said of his upcoming adversary. “What he has done this tournament is fantastic. He has won against some top players; course Milos, Coric. He struggled a little bit with consistency of his results in the last two years. But with the quality of the tennis that he possesses, he deserves to be definitely [in] the top 15–maybe top 10 of the world. He’s got that quality and potential, no question about it.
“It’s funny that we’re going to play first time against each other. We’ve practiced many times. We’ve known each other obviously for a long time. Here we go.”
Pouille may not be quite as excited for this matchup. After all, who wants to run into Djokovic at the Aussie Open? The 31-year-old Serb is already a six-time champion of this event and he is an obvious favorite to lift the trophy yet against as the current world No. 1 and reigning champion of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Djokovic, who has dropped only two sets so far to Denis Shapovalov and Daniil Medvedev, is coming off a second-set retirement from Kei Nishikori on Wednesday night that will replenish the fuel tank on the heels of a relatively tough fourth-rounder against Medvedev.
“I think everybody can beat anybody now,” Pouille said when asked about the rises of players like Medvedev and fellow semifinalist Stefanos Tsitsipas. “Even though the best are still the best–Djokovic, Rafa, Roger…they are still dominating tennis–more and more players are coming up. I think that’s great for the game.”
Pouille is back on the rise, himself, but a borderline impenetrable roadblock is in his way on Friday. Whereas it was Pouille who forced Raonic to change–or try to change–his game-plan, this time he will be the one who has to mix things up because Djokovic will almost certainly enjoy the upper hand in most baseline exchanges.
Respective current form suggests the underdog may have a chance of snagging a set, but Djokovic won’t surrender any more than that; not at his favorite tournament and not on his favorite court.
Pick: Djokovic in 3
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Every time Pouille has control of the points he does his best to transfer the advantage to Djoker by putting the ball in his striking zone.
Even though Rafa dominated Berdych in the first 2 sets it wasn’t because Berdy wasn’t trying.
Djoko is going to lose lesser games than Rafa did. A loud and clear message being sent out :O
Please, you want to compare Pouille to Tsitsipas? Pouille is no. 28 seed, Tsitsipas is 14; Pouille beat Raonic to get to SF; Tsitsipas beat Fed! No comparison there!
Frew says Pouille did all he could even changing his cap to the white cap. You couldn’t make it up.
Pouille manages to outdo Tsitsipas in terms of winning fewer games in the match.
Pouille is really trying to lose as soon as possible, he’s hitting some dumb shots right back at Djoko and let Djoko wins the point. He’s trying his best to let Djoko conserve energy for the final.
match fixing?
vmk1
What loud and clear message? Tsitsipas was playing to win, Pouille was not.
I am sure Nole fans would say the same thing about tsitsi
Only if they’re not being objective.
If Rafa loses this, there is no shame since he is the underdog anyway against Nole on hard courts especially at the AO. If he does manage to win, he can probably turn the rivalry around for the rest of the season.
Whoever wins this has a better chance of passing Roger’s record. May the best man win
How is Rafa the underdog to Nole on h/c? Rafa leads Djoker 2:1 at the USO and Djoker took 6 hours to win their only encounter in Australia in 2012.
Not necessary, one slam won’t change much! Chances are both of them may surpass Fed’s slam counts.
I think Rafa will win this. An aggressive Rafa is hard to beat, he’s playing shorter point tennis now, unlike all,except one (ie Shapo)of Djoko’s opponents so far. Those who rallied with Djoko from the baseline played into Djoko’s hands.
The commentators don’t want to admit that the match was a sham.
I hope they both play the way they’ve played in this tournament so far.
why would Pouille not try to win? can someone explain? cheers
Probably too tired, and probably without the fighting spirit and without the belief that he has a chance. Tsitsipas OTOH, plays with the belief that he has a chance to win, and comes with a fighting spirit.
But you always have a chance to win, because even if your opponent is much the better player, he can pick up an injury, suffer a bad fall, anything can happen in a two horse race.
Exactly guest. I don’t understand why Pouille can be so bad. He said he tried everything (really?) but couldn’t hit past Djoko. He said unless you’re serving at 90 to 100%, you couldn’t win the point. Really? Why not S&V and played like there’s nothing to lose? Shapo did well to make the match competitive against Djoko.
After losing set one 6-0, didn’t he know that he needed to change something? At least tried some S&V, or one two punch, or at least tried moving forward , took some risks and tried taking the ball early. No, he didn’t do any of those, but kept staying at the baseline and allowed Djoko to dictate points.
The problem with these players is that they tend to underestimate how good Djoko’s retrieving skills is – when you are playing against Djoko, you have to expect the ball to come back to you at all times. There are a few times Djoko was hitting some desperate retrieving passing shots back to Pouille, if Pouille was expecting that, what he could do was rushed to the net and intercept the ball and hit it to the other open corner. Instead, he just stayed at the baseline and not expecting the balk to come back to him from Djoko.
IOWs, Pouille has his chances as I’d observed, but he’s ill prepared to take them. It’s not that he would win the match, but at least could make it more competitive and gave a good account of himself in his first ever slam SF!
Even though Tsitsipas lost badly too, at least we could see that he’s trying hard, moving forward when possible to attack, hit some wonderful DTL shots, and served big. I didn’t see Pouille changed anything during the match even when he’s losing it badly.
I didn’t watch Tsitsipas vs Rafa. But credit to Tsitsi for making it a decent match. Pouille was a surprise semi-finalist. I did not expect him to play so well this entire tournament, including beating Coric in 4 sets after lasting through 5 sets to beat Popryin? And then Pouille recovered and played well again to beat Raonic – wow. I had written Pouille off. He has been an up and down player but when at his best, I’ve thought of him as a top 10 potential. And unafraid to bring it to the anyone. Lucas must have been whipped and didn’t recover well after beating Milos. Lucas is in remarkable good shape compared to what I expected from him this tournament but he did his best just to get to this semi. Hoping with his new coach he will be even more ready and fit to play his best in the GS’s this year. It seems to me Pouille used to have incredible powers of recovery.
Pouille’s was disproportionately bad v Nole, compared to how he did vs Raonic, imo. It shows me how well prepared Nole is to go the distance considering having trouble with both Shapo and Medvedev. Nole is showing me he’s ready to make it a good match vs Rafa. But I don’t expect him to beat Rafa because Rafa has been crazy good to my eye and(I’m not the best critic of Rafa). I think Rafa will win his second AO but Nole will be able to make it competitive, which I was doubting after watching him against Shapo and Medvedev. Nole got a break that perhaps he needed due to Kei’s inability to stand on two legs and Pouille hitting the wall physically.
Looking forward to the Rafole.
Guest, Pouille was playing to win but he just did not have the skill or the experience to handle a super-hot Joker! Besides the lesbian coach (fact) of Pouille, Amelia Mauresmo Game-planned wrongly for Pouille ( who did not lay his usual game due to that wrong game planning of his lady coach Mauresmo…who i am sure is going to be fired!) and just did not have any experience or skill in coaching Top 50 ATP players (besides Andy Murray for a short period in 2014!) to beat world No.1’s especially a tactically brilliant and in form Novak!
But Mauresmo didn’t play from the baseline so hard to think that that’s how she planned the match. Pouille didn’t even serve to his usual standard.
French players tend to be talented but laid back…………..they have a ‘whatever’ attitude. Just think of Monfils, Gasquet, Tsonga, Pouille to name a few. Before the match, the commies said that Pouille had lost his love for tennis and was thinking of quitting because sometimes he doesn’t even feel like training.
I expected Djoker to come with a more aggressive style today to prepare for Rafa’s new game but it was the same old, same old baseline defending game. I think Rafa was expecting Djoker in the final so he’ll be ready. He went as far as saying Djokovic was the favourite today.
Djoko’s retrieving style is good enough to beat anyone so he doesn’t need to change anything. When the need be, he’ll up his aggression.
Djoko could hit with depth all day long and could change direction at will. Pouille said that Djoko’s ROS was incredible, he could return so close to the baseline that put the server on the back foot. Pouille’s serve % was affected by that. And that’s why, imo, staying at the baseline to rally with Djoko is doomed to fail unless you’re Stan at his best.
It’s probably because it’s their first meeting so Pouille wasn’t prepared for what’s coming his way! I mean if Khachanov, Sasha and Tsitsipas could beat Djoko, that means he’s beatable; it’s just that Pouille himself is not good enough to get a win. I mean all three of them come with great serve and beat Djoko with that, Pouille simply doesn’t have the weapon to do so.
The French players are very laid back even though they have the talent. Think of Monfils, Pouille, Tsonga and Gasquet. Before the match, the commies said Pouille thought of quitting tennis because he doesn’t feel motivated enough to train and practice.
Funny, the comments you can read here are that Rafa always wins because of his brilliance, and Novak because he’s lucky (or opponent is tanking, or not playing smart, or some other thing…).
Feel free to browse through some older posts, if you think I’m exaggerating.
And even if Novak wins on Sunday (and who knows if he will), the narrative here will be that it was not because he was better on a given day, but because some other “plausible” reason prevented Rafa proving he’s the one who’s way better.
Interesting…
Adder, Djoko didn’t even need to be brilliant to beat this Pouille! Neither need he when he faced a Kei who had to retire mid match. When he faced a tougher opponent in Medvedev, he had to lose a set and engaged in multiple long rallies to beat Medvedev.
Sure…
You don’t think that Pouille’s level of play could have been directly influenced by his opponent’s play, and thus appeared worse than expected?
Or is it blasphemy to think that way?
Pouille played Djoko for the first time, surely he couldn’t expect the ball to come back time and again with such depth. Did Djoko do anything special, nope, because that’s basically what he has been doing all along!
Pouille OTOH, had punched above his weight to come so far, expecting him to punch above his weight again to beat the no.1 player after all his gruelling earlier matches would be asking for the impossible.
I doubt anyone expected him to win, but certainly we expected something more, ie at least tried to take more risk, go for broke, after being bagelled in the first set. If you don’t take risk, how do you expect to beat Djoko, esp when you’re so unwilling to move away from the baseline.
Djoko exposed Pouille’s weaknesses – Pouille didn’t have a great serve, not varied enough to enable him to gain some free points; he didn’t have the ability to change or adapt his game plan during a match, not a good tactician. He’s also not willing to take risk. I don’t know whether he’s too tired to think out there or not.
Don’t get too excited.
The point I’m making is not about this match alone, instead it refers to a pattern that’s noticeable in most of the comments made on “articles of the past” when it comes to discussing Rafa’s and Novak’s matches.
It is quite easy to check older comments, feel free to try it.
Tell me, can you name one or more matches, where you would say that Novak beat Rafa because he was simply better, and not because:
– Rafa was not at his best, or
– Rafa stubbornly stuck with the wrong tactics (for some unknown reason), or
– Rafa was not 100% healthy, or
– whatever else reason…
Is it possible at all for Rafa to lose a match to any opponent, when he’s healthy and in form, or is that simply unthinkable?
Thank you in advance for your additional contribution to this mental exercise.
Nah, the each time Rafa beat Djoko, we keep hearing that Djoko wasn’t playing his best tennis, esp when it’s on the HCs!
Certainly. Rafa lost 6 (I think) in a row starting in 2011, ending the string with the AO loss in 2012. Since Rafa was perfectly healthy that year (as far as I know) and beating everyone else he came across (except for a rather strange loss to Murray in Japan) he hadn’t yet developed the game to beat the new and improved Djokovic.
For the “injury” encounters: 2015, the lone time Djokovic beat him at RG, Rafa was playing poorly (for him) that year and Djokovic said afterwards that “Rafa was not at his usual level”. Rafa had 2 injury-strewn years in 2015 and 2016, right wrist, left wrist, appendicitis. Rafa was healthy in 2017. Djokovic was spectacularly not. Rafa was healthy at Wimbledon in 2018 and lost a very close semi to Djokovic in what most consider the MOTY. They have not played since.
Rafa did outplay Nole and others on hard court and three US Opens cant be a fluke,but Adder does have a point about this forum . Read back the long list of reasons why Rafa only the AO once.
But, if he wins this time playing as well as he did in the semis, he’ll have deserved it.
Exactly Ramara! There were times Djoko beat Rafa fair and square when Rafa was not injured and he’s playing well; there were times Rafa wasn’t at his best. Likewise for Djoko, they can’t always be at their best all the time!
Rafa was still playing well when Djoko beat him in 2011, hence their HC BO3 matches went the distance; and Djoko had to fight hard to beat Rafa at USO2011 and AO2012.
Djoko too wasn’t playing badly when he lost to Rafa at Montreal and USO2013. Djoko then went on to sweep up four titles in a row at Asia, and European Indoor events.