Rafael Nadal has created another opportunity to prove himself
against Novak Djokovic in the finals on Sunday, the 22nd April. The
seven times Monte-Carlo defending champion seeks to reverse the trend of seven
consecutive defeats in the finals from Djokovic. He ran close to Djokovic the
last time they met in the finals of the Australian Open in January.
Nadal has not dropped a set so far in the competition, but he is not
playing any different from his usual game. He plays the opponent into rallies
and pulls the trigger at the appropriate time to win the point. In the quarter
final, he defeated Stanislas Wawrinka in straight sets. However, there were
many loopholes in his play. The count of unforced errors was high by his
standards, 17 in 22 games. He hit only 15 winners, falling short of number of
unforced errors. He gave many free points to Wawrinka committing errors on
return of serve. Many shots were short, falling within the service line.
Wawrinka could not take advantage but better players will put such short
returns past him. Wawrinka committed 41 unforced errors, but not
many in top ten would do that.
It was similar story against Gilles Simon in the semi-finals. Solid
defence left the opponent clueless how to win points. The ball would rise in
height when Nadal was out of position giving difficulty to the opponent and
time to Nadal to recoup. However, it was not a total domination. Infact, Simon had more break points than Nadal, but failed to convert them.
Djokovic has seen all this on numerous occasions. It has not posed
him difficulties so far. He has been scoring over Nadal in long rallies. Extra
top spin from Nadal has not posed any problems. Djokovic is better in almost
all the departments. His serve is better. He returns deep and fast giving no
opportunity to Nadal to put pressure on the third shot of the rally. He is
quicker on the court and reaches every ball in time to hit a clean winner. His
serve on T from the ad court is bound to create problems to Nadal. He will
outshine Nadal in the aces department. His backhand is the best among the
current crop of players.
Nadal is playing the same game, standing fifteen feet behind the
baseline. How will he escape the angles of Djokovic? He still moves to his
right to convert backhand into forehand, leaving wide gaps on his forehand. His
backhand is the same defending shot most of the time. There is nothing new from
Nadal seen so far in the tournament.
However, there is hope for him. Djokovic is not playing as well as
he was doing last year. He has dropped sets to Alexandr Dolgopolov and Tomas
Berdych in the previous rounds. It will be a difficult task for Nadal, but he
has a fair chance of prevailing this time round.
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