It was, on the third point of the final set, nothing more complicated than a routine overhead and Rafael Nadal, as you would expect, was there, back foot on the service line, racket cocked and ready to hit an exclamation point.
He whacked it into the net and you no longer had merely strong suspicions that he was going to lose this Indian Wells final. You could have wrapped it right there, despite the fact that there was 30 minutes of tennis left.
I’ve seen Nadal miss overheads from near the baseline, but never something this easy. This one said tired, mentally wasted, ready for 12 days off before the start of the Sony Ericsson Open on Key Biscayne.
But let’s also deliver enormous credit to Novak Djokovic for this 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory. He’s the one who, in large measure, wore Nadal out and, when the dust settled, Nole, who had a day earlier wrested the No. 2 ranking from Roger Federer, was 18-0 for the season with 20 straight wins dating back to last season and looking like the biggest story of 2011.
There was some brilliance in this match, and that was to be expected when you pit the two best players in tennis against each other. But, on balance, it wasn’t a particularly memorable match. It was splotchy and uneven in its execution, probably because these two men are so fabulously able to cover the court. The defense was a lot better than the offense.
How uneven, you ask? After being broken in the opening set, Nadal won 18 straight points on serve into the second set, his streak ending at 30-0 while he was on serve at 2-3 and while, incredibly, he hadn’t gotten a first serve in the entire second set to that point.
He lost that game, despite holding a 40-15 edge, but broke back when Djokovic double-faulted an 88 mph second serve a few inches beyond the T (more unevenness) into the ad court.
At that point, with Nadal on serve at 3-4, there was no suggestion of what was to come, but, in fact, everything for Nadal just declined from there, with the exception of some tough fighting in the final game of the second set, when Rafa parried away five set points, finally going down on the sixth.
A few moments later he was gaffing an overhead into the net and all those flag-waving Spanish fans on the stadium court looked particularly dejected. I suspect they, too, knew this was going to be a losing afternoon.
For Nole, it was only his fifth lost set of the season (Federer, Feliciano Lopez, Tomas Berdych and Ivan Dodig are the other four). I’ve seen his backhand a lot better than he displayed Sunday, but he also served with more authority than usual. His curlers into the deuce court were close to dominating.
And once he recovered from losing 18 straight service points, he reasserted himself from the baseline. You look at his hit pattern for this match and about 80 percent of his shots strike beyond the service line, and most of those within a few feet of the baseline.
I don’t care how good you are off the ground. When you have to return balls that deep, it’s limiting, and Nadal didn’t get anywhere near the usual number of shots at inside-out forehands he usually slashes for winners.
With a few exceptions, he didn’t look in Grand Slam champion form during this Indian Wells. He fought well up until this final and he played his best tennis vs. Juan Martin Del Potro. He’s got some heavy training to do to get back on course.
His game isn’t near 100 percent and, after the poor serving in this match, I’m not sure he’s as fit as some seem to think he is. Still, we’re nearly a couple weeks from Key Biscayne.
No question that Djokovic is the favorite at that next 1000 event, but I think you’ll see a better Nadal as well.