Novak Djokovic repeats as champion in London with a straight-set victory over Rafael Nadal on Monday. Nadal ends his season with a 75-7 record.
Rafael Nadal may have won the war in 2013, but Novak Djokovic won this battle. In fact, Djokovic came out on top in every single one of his post-U.S. Open battles.
The world No. 2 improved to 22-0 during the fall swing and successfully defended his World Tour Finals title by beating Nadal 6-3, 6-4 in one hour and 36 minutes on Monday night. Djokovic, also a recent champion in Beijing, Shanghai, and Paris, fired six aces without double-faulting and he dropped serve only once.
“One thing that made the difference in today’s match was the serve,” Nadal reflected. “I didn’t serve well; he served well. On this kind of court, the first shot is very important and he hit that first shot much better than me.”
The Spaniard recovered from an immediate donation of serve in the second game of the match by breaking his opponent at 1-3 in the first set. Djokovic started to spray backhands all over everywhere, but his gift-giving mode ended in a hurry. The second seed seized another scalp of the Nadal serve by converting break point at the end of a dramatic rally that concluded with a forehand volley winner. Back in front 5-3, Djokovic made no mistake with the set on his racket.
Set two was mostly one-way traffic, starting with a Djokovic break for 2-1. Nadal, who struggled to find the range on his forehand all day long, never could get back on serve. The world No. 1 did well to hold at 3-5, even saving a championship point with a punishing forehand down the line. If the pressure was on in the following game, Djokovic did not show it. After missing one more match point, Djokovic hammered an ace at deuce and clinched victory when Nadal set an inside-out forehand just wide.
“I think I’ve worked on a few things in my game and serve that has helped me win a lot of matches in last two months,” the winner explained. “This is definitely the best possible way that I can finish the season; the official ATP season, not including the Davis Cup final that I have in a few days’ time.”
Nadal still leads the overall head-to-head series 22-17, but Djokovic boasts a 13-7 advantage on hard courts.
“We push each other to the limit; we make each other better,” Djokovic said of the rivalry. “We make each other work harder on our games, especially when we play against each other. It’s always a huge challenge.”
Rafa is still the best.
Looking forward to seeing the World #1 in Abu Dhabi at the end of December.
Vamos Rafa!
I did not expect Rafa to win this but hoped he did as he wanted it real bad as it was missing in his resume. What I saw was really disappointing. Never did I think it will be a straight set defeat , I def thought will go to 3.
Indoors is just not Rafa surface though he did much better this year than other years.
The serving, FH, ROS all of it was so bad all match, it was pathetic to watch.
Also on tired part, Nole has played as many matches as Rafa..if he can gut out a win, there should be no excuses for Rafa
Rafa has kinda lost the edge he built on Nole by these 2 defeats and Nole will now be very high on confidence to start 2014. He is the out n out fav for AO 2014.
“Also on tired part, Nole has played as many matches as Rafa..if he can gut out a win, there should be no excuses for Rafa”
I respectfully disagree. Rafa has played more matches than Nole during 2013, fact, so it is not surprising that he is tired. This time of the season is Nole’s favourite and the opposite for Rafa, so it is not a surprise that Nole would be more up for it than Nole. Personally, I am very pleased with Rafa’s showing on HC this year, much better than previously.
Novak was always the favourite for AO2014, it is his favourite Slam! However, I am quietly confident Rafa will cause an upset there. This loss will help keep Rafa on his toes, and that can only be bad news for his rivals.
Vamos Rafa!
told you so! I hate what djoker is becoming again!
If you can’t serve a single ace in a match played on indoor HC you might as well just concede victory. Nadal’s serve mojo, already one of his most vulnerable points, deserts him at the end of the season.
Congratulations to both players for such a great season.
Let’s hope next season is at least half as good for Rafa!
^^Thank you @Shireling for pointing out the obvious. I am glad you also noticed how erratic Rafa’s serve is during the Fall. This is why I think it is mental fatigue, not some fundamental technical problems. Rafa himself also singled out his poor serving as one of the reasons for his poor performance. That 1st set was lost because of the double faults, not advisable on fast surfaces in a best of 3……………..
Sanju, You are being far too harsh on Rafa. You cannot compare the year that has just passed for Rafa with that of Djokovic.
If you recall, Novak was totally spent after the USO in 2011 – the year when he swatted every other player aside for 8 months. What Rafa did this year was a far greater achievement and will stand for ever as testimony to not only his skills but also to his extraordinary willpower and courage.
^^I have been scratching my head to try and see Sanju’s point of view on this but I am failing. Sanju just REALLY wanted Rafa to win WTF 2013…….
Yes to cap a beautiful year..would hve been okay with loss, just was disappointed it happened in straights
very well put, ed
and re sanju, I think it is disappointment speaking and that’s where a bit of exaggeration is coming into it.
I knew that Nole was the clear favorite but thought that Rafa was not as tired as he turned out to be and might just do it in Rafa-magic style in a hard-fought three setter. I don’t read yesterday’s match as any indication that anything has changed between the two of them. AO14 Nole is the favourite and not because of yesterday or even this fall – it is the slam that is the easiest one for him. But we know that Rafa has a decent chance at an upset here again, and a far better one on that surface than indoors at the end of a tiring fall / year. It will again be one of the last times Rafa will have to complete a second career slam so we can expect him to try very hard. I agree with ritb that there is nothing technically wrong with Rafa’s game, just about everything is very well with it. Let’s see what a refreshed Rafa can do in AO, and same for Andy. Another AO for Nole is the expected result but far from certain. Even in early 2012 after a miraculous year and defeating Rafa 6 times in a row he barely defeated Rafa there over six hours.
I find it upsetting when I see Rafa being berated for failing to beat Djokovic. It was disappointing to see him struggling last night but we have to remember that in comparison to his normal fall season two semi-finals and two finals was pretty damn impressive. what’s more it was in a year when he could be forgiven for performing less well than normal.
sanju is a closet Nolfan who poses as a Rafan. It’s true to form.
In his presser, Rafa doesn’t think that his level was that far away from Novak’s, he said his serve was off which gave Novak the opportunity to dominate. That’s exactly what I saw and Rafa says he hopes to do well in Australia. Rafa did not mention anything about being tired.
Vamos Rafa!
Speak for yourself nadline..such comments not appreciated. I am just not choosing to react however dont think you hav the right to comment on whose fan one is.
Yes RITB, chloro, ed: Was pissed yesterday and disappointed, okay now. Part of the game. Let us see what Rafa shows us next year, hopefully lot to smile about. Really want him to win 2 slams next year AO and FO.
you can do far worse than “accusing” someone of being a fan of a certain tennis player.
Oh okay, now understand your disappointment @Sanju, it’s the fact Rafa lost in straights………
Don’t worry @Sanju, Rafa hates losing to Novak as much as we his fans do. The AO surface is better for him, he has won there before, taken Novak to the limit there so he will be back!
it’s also not at the end of a very long season
Sanju,
You don’t have to defend yourself against such an absurd accusation. Every time any Rafa fan says something that one Rafa fan happens to dislike, then the same old tired accusation is trotted out. You are being accused of not being a real Rafa fan. I have been there and know how it feels.
I do understand why you feel the way you do. I was very disappointed at the manner in which Rafa lost the final. However, I took some time to think it over before I posted any thoughts. I realized that Rafa has done so much this year and maybe it should have been expected that there would be a letdown at some point. He’s not a machine.
I will never condemn you or ever accuse you of not being a Rafa fan. What I would like to say to you is that what helps to overcome these feelings of disappointment, is to have some perspective. I wrote a long post on the other topic thread for the final. In that post, I explained why I am not going to freak out or start awfulizing about this match.
Rafa is just mentally exhausted and wasn’t able to play well enough to get the win. Djoker didn’t play that great, it was just that Rafa couldn’t get his serve going and didn’t have enough left. We should remember that he did secure the year end #1. Djoker ran the table and won all of his events and yet it still wasn’t enough to snatch the year end #1 away from Rafa.
So we can let Djoker have his fall hard court titles and let Rafa have his two slams, the Summer Slam, all those Masters victories, the great hard court victories and being #1 again. Honestly, who among us would have thought Rafa would do what he has done when he first came back?
So just try to think of the big picture and realize that one final loss doe not mean that the world has ended. Cheer up! 🙂
Nole would be advised not to live in a fool’s paradise thinking that he’s now got the mental edge over Rafa again.
exactly…that’s the point…
Good win for Djokovic. He has some nice momentum for the Aussie open.
Yep, Rafa’s serve was very weak yesterday. This is mental fatigue more than anything else.
Why is it so hard for him to get aces? that’s the question. It ain’t lack of upper body strength or faulty technique, that’s for sure. It has got to be his mindset. Rafa doesn’t want to ‘throw anything away’ and in his mind an all out serve is too much of a bargain. Which shouldn’t be IMHO.
I’m not going to be too hard on him, I mean, it was a bad day but the more painful (for Rafa fans) because it became apparent straight away.
he needs to get back to his 2011 US Open days
or 2010, whenever it was
Preach it, Feli……………
RT @feliciano_lopez: “Congrats to @DjokerNole!! As Rafa said, he’s a super player!! @RafaelNadal is the spanish hero and world number 1!! Bravo!!”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/24907129
Nadal, 27, admitted he had been outplayed on Monday but insisted he was not upset to miss out on winning the one significant title to have eluded him.
“That’s the sport,” said the Spaniard. “Seriously, I think it’s not going to change my career, winning or losing today.
“I will not be a better player, talking about the history, with that match or without that match. Maybe I am wrong, but that’s my feeling.
“That’s fine. I normally accept very well the losses. I am not very disappointed.
“I know that I was not the favourite for the match, even if I tried with the right attitude, fighting for every moment, trying to be positive in every moment, even if the match was not going the way that I would like.”
Amen to that, Rafa!!
he is just trying not to let djoker get into his mind like 201!!
I think Rafa has taken his entire entourage to Necker.
At $50 a head, nice one!.
I’ll say that again:
$50,000 a head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I never thought I would agree with Bodo but here goes:
” A lot will be said about Nadal’s shortcomings on indoor hard courts, and there certainly are concrete, game-and-surface based reasons for why this spectacularly great player has never won the year-end championships. But to my mind, the result was heavily influenced by the amount of skin each man had in the game.
Given what Nadal went through during the second half of 2012, his year was successful to a degree that nobody would have dared predict. Even Nadal declared when he won the French Open for the 45th time in a row back in June that the victory had made his year, come what may. What came was even greater success, as Nadal compiled a 75-7 record for the year (with two Grand Slams and 10 total titles). That compares pretty well with Djokovic’s 2011 season, during which he went 70-6.
To top off his comeback, Nadal clinched the year-end No. 1 ranking just two matches into this World Tour Finals. Could you have dreamt up a better way to make this final with Djokovic seem more exhibition than Armageddon? ”
http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2013/11/more-exhibition-armageddon/49767/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#.UoImk-JRCDc
I too agree, exceptionally :-), with Bodo here. Minus the one point re amount of skin in the game. You could argue that both had a vast of amount of reasons to have a lot of that skin in this game. But as some of you pointed out, Rafa was a too spent by this time of the year, even though less than in other years, to take cause an upset on his worst surface against someone of Novak’s callibre unless Novak was had been too much off his game. Get the better of other opponents was doable, but no amount of willpower and fight, no amount of skin in the game can take you past the ‘wall’ of being too spent, as one of you put it. I thought that Rafa was a little less spent but that was wishful thinking.
Ten, twenty years from now I may have forgotten many details of his other remarkable years on the tour, but this will be one of those that will stand out the most. As it happens, so will 2005, his first annus mirabilis. Sorry about the Latin reference, it happens to have taken place 100 years after the year in Einstein’s early career in which he produced so many marvelous results that they stuck that label on it.
ed251137@November 12, 2013 at 8:49 am
—What Rafa did this year was a far greater achievement and will stand for ever as testimony to not only his skills but also to his extraordinary willpower and courage.—
Yes! Rafa’s comeback-year after a seven-month layoff turned out to be his BEST seasons ever! He:
¤ won 10 titles (in 2005 – 11 titles)
¤ reached 14 finals (the career best result)
¤ won 91% of his matches (the career highest result)
¤ finished as YE No.1 (the 3rd time during the career)
¤ won 2 GS tournaments and 5 Masters 1000 tournaments.
In 2005, playing his FIRST full season (and being only 18 -19 years old!), he won 11 titles, but he finished the season as YE No.2. He
¤ won 11 titles
¤ reached 12 finals
¤ won 89% of his matches
¤ finished as YE No.2 (for the first time, then his career highest ranking).
As for the WTF, Rafa’s best achievement there was his victory over Fed – Fedfans can’t say anymore that Rafa hasn’t defeated Fed on indoors hard courts. It’s a really sweet victory!!! 🙂
augusta,
Well said! We should not forget that Rafa got his first ever win against Fed on indoor hard courts! That should not get lost in the disappointment over his loss to Djoker in the final.
Another reason for Fed fans to gnash their teeth as Rafa keeps making inroads against Fed. 🙂
AO2014 odds, this is why some of us are bullish about Rafa, he is right there behind Djoker:
RT @BryanAGraham: “Your Aussie Open odds (starts in 63 days): Djokovic (6/4), Nadal (5/2), Murray (9/2), Delpo (10/1), Federer (20/1). “
And according to ‘easyodds’:
N.Djokovic – 2.56
R.Nadal – 3.15
A.Murray – 7.6
JM Del Potro – 18
R.Federer – 14.5
A reminder that Djokovic’s post USO run is nothing new, he did last year as well:
RT @juanjosetennis: “Last year, Djokovic lost all of 1 match between the 2012 US Open and 2013 Indian Wells (L to Querrey in Paris). 5 titles in that run.”
It’s the same as Rafa’s domination during the Spring, the only difference is that Rafa has improved his level in the Fall (making the semis or better) while Djokovic was nowhere as consistent in the Fall (see Madrid and Rome).
sanju is a devoted rafa fan ! I would never ever doubt his loyalty….sometimes, he can get sad and negative ,hence his comments 🙂 not to worry …
I won’t go into details…I am just going to say : Rafa will be on fire at Oz 2014. Mark my words.
Thanks vamosrafa. I dont think anyone does here except 1 lady who anyways thinks its her birthright to take potshots at everyone 😉
and no , tiredness was not necessarily a reason! and overall rafa has played more matches i 2013, fact..but lately,post USO, nole has played more as he has won every tournaments he has won .. DOes not really matter…rafa got slughtered by fed 6-3 6-0 in 2011 WTF but emphatically beat federer in 4 sets at Oz 2012.
Rafa is my joint fav with nole, no less no more.