Australian Open
Men’s Final
Djokovic over Nadal
At Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2015, top seeded Novak Djokovic topped the second seed, Roger Federer, and at the Australian and French Opens in 2016, where he was also the top seed, he bested second-seeded Andy Murray to win four Grand Slam tournaments in a row. Now, in the first Grand Slam tournament of 2019 Djokovic, once again the top seed, will take on the second seed in the finals, this time Rafa Nadal. So, once again, we get the pleasure of watching the top two seeds battle it out for the title, each looking to add to his Grand Slam tournament championship totals. Although Nadal has 17 Slam titles and Djokovic has 14, Djokovic leads Nadal 27-25 in head-to-head matches and has won six Australian Opens compared to Nadal’s one. Additionally, he played an almost super-human semi-final match against Lucas Pouille that was over so fast that if you had your watch set for an hour late you would have missed all but five games. Nadal, for his part, also romped over a hero of tomorrow, Stefanos Tsitsipas, to set up this anticipated showdown. It appears that Djokovic is back to where he was when he dominated the Men’s game winning those four straight titles in 2015-2016 mentioned above. There were times in the past fortnight, particularly in his last two matches, when he appeared not to miss a shot, which we call playing in “the zone”. As much as Rafa will try to force his style on the match, Djokovic will be playing six inches behind the baseline, and Rafa will be six feet behind that line, even more on return of serve. Djokovic will dictate play and take time, the most precious commodity, away from Nadal. Whether The Joker plays in the zone again isn’t important. He will set the pace, will dictate play, and should dominate where it counts—in the score. At this point, I think the bigger question is, can Rafa win his twelfth French Open this coming May.