Picking up where I left off

Well, friends, the sense of anticipation over the impending Nadal-Djokovic French Open 2013 semifinal clash has brought to my mind the last entry I made to this little weblog, nearly one year ago, wherein I facetiously proffered the notion that Novak Djokovic (then in the midst of what looked like an unthinkable comeback from two sets and a break down to potentially defeat Nadal in the 2012 final) might be dabbling in some form of sorcery or another to render himself immune to defeat in Majors, no matter how dire a deficit he might face. The events to follow, which saw Nadal reassert his dominance on the red clay and thwart Djokovic's French Open title hopes for at least another year, would seem to have disproven that hypothesis. The fact remains, though, that for a little over a set, Djokovic clearly demonstrated the potential to outplay Nadal even in the Spaniard's greatest stronghold, where his results have perennially confirmed and reconfirmed a dominance as thorough as any man has ever maintained over a single Major.

Djokovic confirmed his ongoing status as a serious clay-court threat to Nadal (indeed, the one such player on the planet Earth) by decisively defeating him in the final of the Monte Carlo Masters event earlier this season, where Nadal had not lost in a decade. Adding this victory to his two previous clay-court wins over Nadal at Rome and Madrid 2011, Djokovic has now beaten the King of Clay once at every big clay-court tennis event other than the French Open, and has won three of their last six meetings on clay, as well as eight of the last 11 across all surfaces. But Nadal remains undefeated-- a perfect 4-0-- in career meetings with Djokovic at the French Open itself, and has surrendered only one (previously-noted) set through those four encounters.

The matter of who will win on this occasion thus seems very much up in the air to your author, to the point at which it is almost pointless to try to reason out or predict. The matter of who one might want to win, however, may be somewhat more effectively tackled in a blog post such as this.

Now, I am somewhat rare among enthusiastic followers of men's tennis in that I have no strong favorite among the "big four" currently at the top of the game; I like each of one of them, but am not a fanatical supporter of any, and have rooted both "for" and "against" each of them on various occasions over the years. In times now well past, I was reliably partial to Nadal and Djokovic (or anyone else, for that matter) in their Grand Slam encounters with Federer, as I hoped to see the Swiss legend's once-unshakable dominance overturned; in more recent times, I have often sided with Federer, as much out of sympathy derived from his ever-so-slowly dwindling year-in and year-out performance level as anything else. I supported Nadal to defeat Djokovic in last year's French Open final, but was thrilled to see Lukas Rosol pull his electrifying upset over Rafa come Wimbledon. I was hopeful to see Andy Murray rewarded for years of dogged persistence with a win over Federer in last year's Wimbledon final (sadly not to be), but had the opposite allegiance when they met at the Australian Open this January, at which time it felt as though Federer was now the embattled underdog struggling desperately for another shot at the big-time. I was likewise sympathetic to Murray's effort to take his first Major title against Djokovic at the US Open, but leaned more toward the Serbian's camp for the Australian title.

In sizing up a given blockbuster Grand Slam encounter, then, I often find myself trying to weight my sympathies for the coming match in accordance with a set of broader contextual criteria. "Who will be happier if he wins?" I ask myself. "Who would suffer more personally from a loss?" Most significantly, I wonder to myself whose season, and whose career, would be affected more greatly by a given result.

In this case, I feel that the match has particularly profound implications for both men on each count. On the one hand, Djokovic's inability to wrest the French Open from Nadal has, in recent times, proven the one obstacle to completing his collection of Grand Slam titles and achieving status among the very highest echelon of greats in the game; on the other, the French has served as Nadal's lone impenetrable stronghold among the Majors since Djokovic replaced him as the world's number one player two years ago, and his claim to contention for the number-one ranking, both for this season and potentially for seasons to come, thus seems potentially to be hanging in the balance. Should Djokovic defeat Nadal at the French Open, it will seem firmly established that the world's-number-one from Serbia has altogether asserted authority over his age-old rival at this stage in their careers, and it may be difficult to conceive of Nadal-- who is growing old by the standards of a hard-charging clay-courter with dodgy knees-- adding many additional Major titles to his career resume in times to come.

The implications for the 2013 season in isolation are perhaps even more stark. If Nadal should win this match and go on to successfully defend his title, then he and Djokovic will have split the two Majors contested thus far this year, and Nadal will lead the points race for the year-end number-one ranking; if Djokovic wins and proceeds to claim his first French Open championship, he will have all but cemented his status as the year's number-one overall player, having already claimed two of the four Major titles. It is for this reason above all that I feel myself sympathizing with Nadal-- if Nadal wins, we maintain a viable rivalry at the highest echelon of the game, with all of the tension and drama that accompany it; if Djokovic prevails, it should seem to all but end the rivalry for good, or at least for the remainder of 2013.

It is as though the two are playing Monopoly*, and the French Open represents Nadal's last remaining operative color lock; should Djokovic strip him even of that, his victory in the larger game is ensured. If not, the contest rolls on.

*One might have been apt to expect a Chess analogy in this portion of the post before one to the far less intellectually-respectable Monopoly, but I so happen to have participated in the latter more recently.