By Thomas Swick
It is a testament to Novak Djokovic’s current dominance that he can play subpar tennis for a set – as he did in his last two matches here – and still win the set. And the match. And the championship.
His match Sunday against Andy Murray was similar to his semifinal match against Juan Monaco. Both times Djokovic breezed through the first set (6-0 over Monaco, 6-1 over Murray) and then struggled in the second. “Struggled” when applied to Djokovic is a relative term; it means he holds serve but fails to break. Then the tiebreak comes and, with the pressure on, he stands strong.
When you see him in person, on the court, he looks like the prototype of a contemporary tennis player: streamlined, long-limbed, sinewy. The impression that he seems almost manufactured for optimum effectiveness in the game is furthered by his robotic style of play, especially when he hits his rigid, straight-backed, two-handed backhand. There is a machine-like efficiency to the stroke. Of course, when he stretches for a ball, arm extended, legs widened into a near-split, the stiff robot turns elastic.
He did some light hitting on the court in the morning, looking looser, less tightly-wound, than he does in games. When Murray came out for his practice, the two opponents cordially exchanged a hand slap near the empty umpire’s chair.
Murray has a similar physique but there is something less taut, more shambling about him. That, plus whatever goes on in the head, is the difference between #1 and #4.
Shortly after Murray departed, the booming sounds of “God Bless America” came through the sound system. I looked to the north baseline, where Nestor Torres had stood the day before, and saw no one. Then my eyes moved toward the south tunnel, which Murray had just disappeared into. Near it, a little girl in a dress was singing into a microphone.
In the stands, an ATP employee was taking a picture of a man wearing the flag of Catalonia around his waist. An odd sight at a match between a Serb and a Scot.
The next time I looked at the court, enormous Japanese drums filled the south end, adding to the cultural dissonance. Would we get cheers of “Allez, Nole?”
The seats started to fill, and the number of hats almost made it look like Easter – not Palm – Sunday. Caps predominated (especially since Xperia was handing them out), but there were a lot of straw hats as well. A few young women wore fetching fedoras with narrow brims, while older women favored floppy, protective, gardening hats. (Apparently brims, like hips, widen with age.) Some men sported safari hats. A woman sitting a few rows up from the court held a frilly white parasol, which she considerately stashed just before the match’s start.
After the Japanese drumming, everyone stood for the Star-Spangled Banner – sung by the girl who had practiced “God Bless America” – but a lot of the men failed to remove their hats. (The cap wearers were the most guilty.) I mentioned this to the man sitting next to me in the press box and he wondered, reasonably, how many in attendance were U.S. citizens.
Then the match began, each player holding serve until the fourth game, when Murray lost his. He failed to break back, and then, as if still troubled by the first loss of serve, he lost it again. Relatively soon, the score was 6-1. Though those seven games took over three quarters of an hour to play.
The crowd got more into the match in the second set. After holding his serve in the fifth game, Murray gave a subdued fist pump. In the eighth game, Djokovic came back from 0-30 with a service winner, an ace, and another service winner. His serve was more dependable than his backhand, which frequently went wide on shots down the line. The unforced errors around this time were 25 for Murray and 22 for Djokovic.
In the eleventh game, Murray threw up a double fault and then, two points later, an ace. This brought chants of “MUR-RAY! MUR-RAY! MUR-RAY!” Then “AN-DY! AN-DY! AN-DY!” Though occasionally someone would yell: “Come on Rafa!”
During the tiebreak Serbian flags in section E were prominent. After erasing a mini-break, Murray, serving at 2-2, double-faulted. This gave Djokovic a lead he would not relinquish. After a Murray forehand sailed long at 6-4, the Serbian raised both arms and threw back his head in his now familiar “King of the Tennis World” pose.
During the trophy ceremony bubbles floated in the air and purple-and-white beach balls bounced in the stands. It was a scene worthy of a Robert Altman movie.
Most of the fans exited the stadium – uninterested in the women’s doubles finals – but quite a few lingered on the grounds. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Crandon Park. Three men walked through the food court, one in the long black cassock of an Orthodox priest and the other two wearing a sajkaca, the hat worn by the Serbian military in World War I that subsequently became an anti-Communist symbol. As I watched them it occurred to me that among his amazing feats Djokovic has brought to tennis the army and the church.
