{"id":5126,"date":"2013-11-12T14:24:01","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T14:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/?p=5126"},"modified":"2015-09-20T01:58:15","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T05:58:15","slug":"whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/blogs\/arienna-lee\/whats-next\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WTF<\/a><\/p>\n

The Barclay’s ATP World Tour Finals, Final<\/b><\/p>\n

[2] Novak Djokovic def [1] Rafael Nadal 6-3, 6-4<\/p>\n

[6] Verdasco\/Marrero def [1] Bryan\/Bryan 7-5, 6-7 (3), 10-7<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hello.<\/p>\n

I know.\u00a0It\u2019s been awhile. And I\u2019m sorry about that. But I did bring excuses. Some of them are even good ones. Others are distinctly less good-\u2013 such as, for instance, would you believe that a few days after the US Open final a convocation of eagles flew in through my office window and made off with my laptop? Or that in October a lamentation of swans invaded my living room and ate the TV? A bevy of larks broke in last week and took off with all my pens? Or, wait, here\u2019s one: How about that I kept trying to watch Asian Swing tennis after work but the Tennis Channel was only showing matches from 2012? (Bingo!) See, a whole flock of excuses. But suffice it for now to say: I\u2019m back, and just in time to say goodbye to another tennis season, to close the book on a heroic tale so many tennis fans fervently hope is only half-finished. That\u2019s right — I\u2019m talking about Fernando Verdasco\u2019s doubles career.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard and his compatriot, David Marrero, defeated the No. 1 ranked Bryan brothers 10-7 in the super tiebreak to claim the WTF beribboned doubles cup. The celebration and victory speech from the Spanish pair could hardly have been more emotional and touching, even by Verdasco\u2019s extraverted, emoticoned standards. I only got home to my TV (a special swan-proof model) in time to see Verdasco win the final point of the match (a serve), and even without knowing anything about the dramatic arc of the match, I was immediately caught up in the exuberance of the moment. First, Verdasco fell joyfully to the ground. Then he got back up, leapt into his partner\u2019s arms and hugged him with all four limbs before running to the sidelines to hug an entire century\u2019s worth of Spaniards. Verdasco then wrote twelve stanzas of free verse poetry on the TV camera lens, and joined forces with Marrero\u2014who became emotionally overcome while dedicating the victory to his late grandfather\u2014to give the season\u2019s most heartwarming acceptance speech. It was a lovely moment, and made me wish I\u2019d seen the tennis that inspired it. (After the trophy presentation both men were stripped from the waist up,\u00a0interviewed<\/a>, and made to declare their intention to, first put clothes on, and then go eat Spanish food in South Kensington. Huzzah.)<\/p>\n

I did, however, see all the points of the thirty-ninth chapter in the Nadal v. Djokovic rivalry. So far as tennis rivalries go, it\u2019s hard to fathom how anybody could still argue against this one being among the very best. The pair has met fifteen times since 2011, and all but two of those encounters were tournament finals. (Both other meetings were semifinals: \u00a0Roland Garros and Beijing in 2013. The match on the Paris clay was made of such high-quality drama that I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if, going forward, it\u2019s frequently misremembered as the tournament final.) Sure, the six-hour-long Australian Open final in 2012 could be accused of being a too-drawn-out slug-fest, but the rivalry has matured considerably over the past two years, with both players (and their ever-present support squads) devising new and more intricate ways to torture each other on the tennis court.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, no matter how good the rivalry, an individual tennis match tends not to soar to the outer-reaches of greatness when one half of the participants forgets to bring his forehand to the court. Novak Djokovic, ever the generous competitor, tried to make up for Rafael Nadal\u2019s absentmindedness by playing super incredibly well from pretty much everywhere on the court, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn\u2019t quite compensate for Rafa\u2019s missing forehand. (Even Djokovic isn\u2019t quick enough to return his own serves.)<\/p>\n

The world No. 2 held easily to open the match, then broke fairly easily, then held again. By the time we reached 3-0 in the opening set Novak had won 12 points to Nadal\u2019s four, and Rafa\u2019s game was looking as if his second serve might have run off with his forehand (probably to South Kensington to eat gambas\u00a0al ajillo with Fernando). When Djokovic nearly broke the Spaniard again in the fourth game, the Serb decided he had to change tactics if there was any hope of elevating this edition of\u00a0The Rivalry\u00a0<\/i>off the plywood floor. So, Djokovic started to make strange errors on his own forehand wing, and the backhand one, too. And it worked like a charm. Rafa held, and then broke back, and then held again.<\/p>\n

By now\u2014we\u2019re at 3-3 in the first, in case you\u2019ve lost count\u2014Djokovic realized that if he went on smothering his forehand and forcing his backhand wide, he might actually\u00a0not win<\/i>\u00a0the match, especially considering that Nadal had begun to play somewhat more assertively and that wary, feral gleam was now visible in the Spaniard\u2019s eyes. Since losing the final of the Barclay\u2019s ATP World Tour Finals would have been no good at all for Djokovic\u2019s twenty-something match win streak (tennis players tend to prefer their streaks to their rivalries), he resumed playing incredibly well and quickly went back to winning the match.<\/p>\n

The highlight of the day came on break point at 3-4 on Nadal\u2019s serve. The point, which you\u00a0must watch<\/a>\u00a0if you haven\u2019t seen it, featured stunning movement and hands from both men. But it was Djokovic who hit the eye-popping lob and Djokovic who won the point, and therefore it was the Serb who was entitled to claim the bonus loot, aka \u201cthe manna of destiny.\u201d In the next game, Nadal won a point\u00a0almost\u00a0<\/i>as good to go up 30-15 on Djokovic\u2019s serve\u2014Rafa slammed a muscular forehand down-the-line and followed it up by a no-look jumping backhand volley winner\u2014but Djokovic got a lucky net cord the very next point and therefore collected double manna, which he promptly cashed in for an ace on set point.<\/p>\n

From there the Serb looked like he was made of stars,\u00a0<\/i>while Rafael Nadal kept on fending off break points like a man who refused to be forced to earth. (Nadal defended 8 of 11 break points, compared with Novak\u2019s 2 of 3.) But despite Nadal\u2019s best psychological efforts, and perhaps because of several forehand errors, Djokovic still managed to break early in the second set. It should be said that Rafa brought his full measure of grit to the contest\u2014fighting off two championship points before sending one of his trademark forehands just wide on the third\u2014 but he simply did not have the game today, while Djokovic had more than plenty. The final score was a surprisingly straightforward 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\n

After the match, as I waited patiently for the ATP Steering Committee to take their places near the trophy table, and for a nice lady named Rebecca to walk the trophy out onto the court, I took a moment to reflect on the state of men\u2019s tennis today. Yesterday\u2019s WTF semifinals featured Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Stanislas Wawrinka. Federer has career 77 titles, Nadal has 60, Djokovic now has 41. The 27-year-old Wawrinka has collected\u00a0four<\/i>. Nadal eased by Federer in the first semifinal, despite being outplayed in throughout most of the first set. Wawrinka was psychologically overmatched from the start and didn\u2019t offer Djokovic anything like the fight he showed in Australia or New York. And while I agree with Darren Cahill that Roger Federer is likely to have a better 2014 than his 2013, he\u00a0is\u00a0<\/i>32 years old. Who\u2019s\u00a0next?<\/i><\/p>\n

Even if Nadal didn\u2019t play anything like his best tennis today, both men belonged in the final ATP match of the year. They\u2019ve been several cuts above the competition for the majority of the season. Nadal will finish the \u201cmost emotional season\u201d he\u2019s had as the No. 1 ranked player in the world. Djokovic will be right behind him, at No. 2, with a Major title to defend in two months\u2019 time. As exciting as it\u2019s going to be to watch and see where 2014 takes this rivalry, it\u2019s hard to imagine who is going to be able to hang in there with these two. Healthy versions of Murray, Federer, and del Potro? Pierre-Hugues Herbert? Martin Alund? Whomever he is, he\u2019s going to need to be very good at tennis, and even better at summoning destiny.<\/p>\n

When Novak Djokovic accepted his WTF trophy, he thanked the London crowd for coming out all week to watch tennis. \u201cThank you for appreciating what we do,\u201d he said. \u201cIt means a lot to us.\u201d This isn\u2019t the first time Djokovic has thanked a crowd for hanging in there through a tournament or a match. He has a way of sounding not only grateful, but also surprised that people turn up to watch him\u2014one of the greatest tennis players in the game\u2014play great tennis. Nadal and Djokovic will both take home more than a million dollars for their London efforts, but it\u2019s still the human recognition that counts. That\u2019s heartwarming. Not quite a Fernando-Verdasco-hug level heartwarming, but nice nonetheless.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also why I would like somebody to tell Djokovic\u2014and Rafa and the rest\u2014that I have plans to fly all the way across the Pacific Ocean to turn up to watch them play tennis at the Australian Open. I\u2019m sure it will mean a lot to them.\u00a0It also means that I will be able to write to you all about it. And\u00a0that<\/i>\u00a0means a lot to me.<\/p>\n

Cover Photo (Creative Commons License): Marianne Bevis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Barclay’s ATP World Tour Finals, Final [2] Novak Djokovic def [1] Rafael Nadal 6-3, 6-4 [6] Verdasco\/Marrero def [1] Bryan\/Bryan 7-5, 6-7 (3), 10-7   Hello. I know.\u00a0It\u2019s been awhile. And I\u2019m sorry about that. But I did bring excuses. Some of them are even good ones. Others are distinctly less good-\u2013 such as, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331],"tags":[781,464,63,78,462,463],"class_list":["post-5126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arienna-lee","tag-atp","tag-barclays-atp-world-tour-finals","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-world-tour-finals","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}