US Open Final: Novak Djokovic v Stan Wawrinka

Who wins?

  • Djokovic in 5

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Wawrinka in 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Wawrinka in 5

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    8

DarthFed

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I'm not so sure I agree that Novak is unique in this. I recall all the nice things Federer's opponents have said about him. I even recall James Blake after one final loss saying how Roger was the only player who visited him in hospital or something when he was suffering from a potentially career ending injury. If Federer were the egoist @Mastoor would have us believe then why does Roger get the vote from the players year in year out. For what it's worth most of the top guys are quite nice which is in stark contrast to the Connors and Lendl's of yesteryear... Unless your agreement is with the nice guys don't win so much? But surely even then... 12 slams being a nice guy? I'll take that! :)

I think losing bugs Roger a lot more than Novak. Fed can usually hide off how pissed he is but you will never see him be like Nole was during the trophy presentation after the USO.

It's funny that you mention James Blake because he is the kind of player I had in mind as someone who is just "too nice" and it hurt him as a competitor. That guy didn't hate losing enough. With Nole it is tough to say if it has hurt him. He is a legend and a tremendous competitor so maybe it has made no difference.
 

Federberg

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I think losing bugs Roger a lot more than Novak. Fed can usually hide off how pissed he is but you will never see him be like Nole was during the trophy presentation after the USO.

It's funny that you mention James Blake because he is the kind of player I had in mind as someone who is just "too nice" and it hurt him as a competitor. That guy didn't hate losing enough. With Nole it is tough to say if it has hurt him. He is a legend and a tremendous competitor so maybe it has made no difference.

oh absolutely I agree that Novak is the most gracious player on the court after a defeat. That's not even a question. But that doesn't translate to him necessarily being just a nicer person off court which is what I took from what @Mastoor was saying. If I got that wrong then my bad. I think both of them are straight shooters generally, and are very good in the locker room. Btw.. my take on how Roger reacts on court after a loss is it's more about his own performance than the losing. I definitely think he's one of those who loves to win more than hates to lose. To be honest I don't place any moral judgement on it either way. I'm definitely more of a hate to lose guy myself, so I have that in common with Rafa at least! :D
 

DarthFed

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Novak always seemed like he enjoys winning more than he hates losing. And while he is a perfectionist who holds himself to very high standards he often seems genuinely happy for the winner and there are never ill feelings to the player who defeated him. I think he even said something along the lines that after the final of the French Open last year his relationship with Stan got better as he felt a connection with him in the way they competed. Stan, Delpo and maybe Cilic are probably the top players he really has great relationships with and he seems friendly with basically everybody else. Only with Roger, although it looks like they are OK with each other in recent years, there's still some tension between them because of the things that happened when Novak came up.

It's possible that this character trait hurts him a bit as a competitor but as a person it's certainly a good quality to have.

Well said and welcome to the board!

As someone who plays and follows chess, which is obviously a different game but one that is very individualistic like tennis, I see similar situations between the players. Some of the greatest players in history are the egomaniacs that can't stand losing and are far from being friendly with any of their peers. But on the other side there have been some great players with tremendous sportsmanship (Boris Spassky, the Russian that played Fischer comes to mind) but they are more of a novelty.
 

Federberg

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Well said and welcome to the board!

As someone who plays and follows chess, which is obviously a different game but one that is very individualistic like tennis, I see similar situations between the players. Some of the greatest players in history are the egomaniacs that can't stand losing and are far from being friendly with any of their peers. But on the other side there have been some great players with tremendous sportsmanship (Boris Spassky, the Russian that played Fischer comes to mind) but they are more of a novelty.

Spassky was one of a kind. I mean.. if he had been a hate to lose guy, no one would really be talking about Fischer now. He could have forced the issue after game (2?) and Fischer would have been defaulted. Can you imagine if it had been Korchnoi sitting across the board and not Boris? :D
 
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DarthFed

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oh absolutely I agree that Novak is the most gracious player on the court after a defeat. That's not even a question. But that doesn't translate to him necessarily being just a nicer person off court which is what I took from what @Mastoor was saying. If I got that wrong then my bad. I think both of them are straight shooters generally, and are very good in the locker room. Btw.. my take on how Roger reacts on court after a loss is it's more about his own performance than the losing. I definitely think he's one of those who loves to win more than hates to lose. To be honest I don't place any moral judgement on it either way. I'm definitely more of a hate to lose guy myself, so I have that in common with Rafa at least! :D

That's true though I do wonder if Roger loves to win as much as he hates to lose, I'm not sure I agree with that. I think he is well-spoken and guards against coming off as especially bitter or angry after a loss.

And I'm with you as being someone who hates to lose a hell of a lot more than I love to win. It's not even close in that regard!
 

DarthFed

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Spassky was one of a kind. I mean.. if he had been a hate to lose guy, no one would really be talking about Fischer now. He could have forced the issue after game (2?) and Fischer would have been defaulted. Can you imagine if it had been Korchnoi sitting across the board and not Boris? :D

Now THAT would've been awesome. Fischer against any of the 3 K's (Korchnoi, Karpov, and Kasparov) game-wise and personality-wise would have been tremendous.
 

Federberg

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Now THAT would've been awesome. Fischer against any of the 3 K's (Korchnoi, Karpov, and Kasparov) game-wise and personality-wise would have been tremendous.

yes his insanity deprived us of some great match ups
 

Backhand_DTL

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Congrats to Stan. it's insane that he has now won 3 out of 4 slams. That's incredible and nobody could have predicted that.

However, I actually didn't think this was a typical case of him being on fire to where there was nothing Novak can do (like say, the FO final last year). I actually thought that while he played well, Stan didn't red-line his game, which is what you think would have needed to happen for him to beat Novak. In a way, that's just as impressive, and a sign of him becoming truly elite, as he's not someone who needs to have an unusually hot day to win.

But, when you look at how he was hitting his groundies, you can see something is a touch off. The forehand in particular, lacked direction. You could see so many instances where it looked like he had a forehand lined up down the line, and he hit it almost to the middle. He has enough power and depth to where it ends up being a really good rally shot, but those are the kind of shots he would normally convert for a clean winner. The backhand wasn't as hot as it normally can get either, and you can visibly see him holding back a bit on some mid court backhands that he would usually destroy because he wasn't completely feeling it.

Of course, I'm nit-picking, as you could also spot some insane winners that he hit. But the reason I bring this up is two-fold:

1) Stan played a smart match and wasn't in pure shotmaking mode. Specifically, his usage of the cross court sliced backhand to Novak's own backhand, knowing that Novak just doesn't muster up quality replies to that shot. It's something Federer has had success with in the past against Novak, and even Del Potro recently.

2) Novak was really disappointing in his tactical approach and his inability to adapt. He let Stan get away with way too many harmless chipped backhand returns, and instead of punishing them by running around his backhand (something Federer and Nadal do better than anyone. They destroy the slice), he just pushed the ball back with a cross court backhand and the rallies were basically neutralized, which as a server, is not what you're typically looking for.

Another thing that stands out to me is that Novak, despite having so much success against Stan historically (as in their overall h2h), gets really tentative when Stan plays well in these big matches. He finds it easier to defend out of his mind and hit incredible shots from unlikely positions (and he didn't do enough of that last night) than to actually take control of the point and move Stan around, which is what he normally does so well. Part of it I think has to do with intimidation. I really think Stan's game intimidates Novak when he finds his groove, especially Stan's own ability to hit some insanely powerful shots even when it looks like Novak has the ascendancy in the rallies. Novak is a bit afraid to fight fire with fire with Stan as he believes that's Stan's game. That's understandable, but Novak's inability to come up with an alternative isn't.
I would imagine approaching a match against Stan is quite tricky for Novak. On the one hand if Stan doesn't play close to his best Novak is very likely to win if he doesn't beat himself but on the other hand if Stan has a great day initiating neutral rallies and a steady rhythm from the baseline plays right into his hands and while it wears most other opponents down it even seems to play Stan into form within a match.

That Novak always won their best of three matches between the Slams rather easily by playing well within himself could also play a role in him employing a rather conservative game plan for the best of five matches and it even did work during the first set for the last four times but afterwards Novak failed to identify when Stan was about to find his groove and it would have been necessary to switch to a more disruptive strategy to keep him from making more and more of the seemingly low percentage shots and when Novak finally tried to change something it was already too late.

But while Novak certainly could have chosen a better tactical approach this particular loss was more down to poor execution on the big points. His serve was off all tournament but making just 51 % of first serves and basically getting no free points on Deuces and break points is probably the worst he served in years which makes it seem likely to me that this was connected to his recent physical problems. The return actually worked quite well and he created a lot of chances even staying in his comfort zone in the rally afterwards but his confidence took a hit after missing out on the double break in set one and for the rest of the match Stan was able to win a majority of the big points by playing rock solid but rarely brilliant while Novak missed multiple makeable returns on second serve and easy aggressive forehands from advantageous positions when it counted. So in my opinion Novak's fragile mentality on the day played a bigger role in the loss than using a less than perfect strategy did.

Nevertheless it would be really interesting to see if Novak would try to use a different game plan in case they play each other at the Australian Open next year (and even more so should there be no match between them for the rest of the year) or if he would hope for Stan not being able to keep up a high enough level for long enough once again.
 
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Mastoor

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oh absolutely I agree that Novak is the most gracious player on the court after a defeat. That's not even a question. But that doesn't translate to him necessarily being just a nicer person off court which is what I took from what @Mastoor was saying. If I got that wrong then my bad. I think both of them are straight shooters generally, and are very good in the locker room. Btw.. my take on how Roger reacts on court after a loss is it's more about his own performance than the losing. I definitely think he's one of those who loves to win more than hates to lose. To be honest I don't place any moral judgement on it either way. I'm definitely more of a hate to lose guy myself, so I have that in common with Rafa at least! :D

No, I didn't say No1e is nicer guy than any other player because of "how gracious player on the court after a defeat" he is, though that alone would be enough to call him the nicest of them all. He actually helps many players and some of them are his immediate rivals like Murray, Wawrinka, Delpo, Raonic, Cilic and God knows who else, others like Troicki, Tipsarevic, Coric and many juniors, whom both financially and with advice he helps, aren't. Some of those thanked him for help with improvements in their careers or acknowledged his influence, most recent;ly Delpo after beating No1e in Rio and Wawrinka after beating No1e in NY.
 
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brokenshoelace

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I'm not so sure I agree that Novak is unique in this. I recall all the nice things Federer's opponents have said about him. I even recall James Blake after one final loss saying how Roger was the only player who visited him in hospital or something when he was suffering from a potentially career ending injury. If Federer were the egoist @Mastoor would have us believe then why does Roger get the vote from the players year in year out. For what it's worth most of the top guys are quite nice which is in stark contrast to the Connors and Lendl's of yesteryear... Unless your agreement is with the nice guys don't win so much? But surely even then... 12 slams being a nice guy? I'll take that! :)

The big difference is Federer was crushing those guys, so he can afford to be super nice (and I'm not implying he wouldn't have visited say, Nadal in the hospital). In other words, he didn't have much to worry about so he didn't need to have a cut throat mentality against them.

I agree with you that the top guys are actually all really nice for the most part (what outrages us about their behavior is really silly when you think about it in the grand scheme of things), but something about the way Novak approaches competition makes him significantly more gracious than Nadal or Federer. You can see it on his face when he loses some of these matches.
 
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Federberg

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The big difference is Federer was crushing those guys, so he can afford to be super nice (and I'm not implying he wouldn't have visited say, Nadal in the hospital). In other words, he didn't have much to worry about so he didn't need to have a cut throat mentality against them.

I agree with you that the top guys are actually all really nice for the most part (what outrages us about their behavior is really silly when you think about it in the grand scheme of things), but something about the way Novak approaches competition makes him significantly more gracious than Nadal or Federer. You can see it on his face when he loses some of these matches.

I agree. No question Novak is the most gracious of the three when he loses
 
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Carol

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The big difference is Federer was crushing those guys, so he can afford to be super nice (and I'm not implying he wouldn't have visited say, Nadal in the hospital). In other words, he didn't have much to worry about so he didn't need to have a cut throat mentality against them.

I agree with you that the top guys are actually all really nice for the most part (what outrages us about their behavior is really silly when you think about it in the grand scheme of things), but something about the way Novak approaches competition makes him significantly more gracious than Nadal or Federer. You can see it on his face when he loses some of these matches.
Uh?:-(:scratch:why? because he uses to give a hug to the opponent? there are others details and actions to say who is better loser than who
 
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Mary

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I agree. No question Novak is the most gracious of the three when he loses

I like the way Novak is generous to other players, win or lose he never criticises others and is specific in the praise he gives especially to young players like Edmund and Zverev. Some others could learn from this!