The final Friday of Roland Garros is like a day of reckoning for the men competing in the singles. For the duration of the tournament, up until then, it is like a winnowing process. The players aren’t really like chaff, but most often the crème de la crème rises to the top, and now the process has been completed for 2014. It will be Rafael Nadal versus Novak Djokovic on Sunday.
The two men have different reasons to want to be in the winner’s circle. Djokovic needs the Coupe to make his Slam title list a full house; one for each of the four slams. Nadal needs it to put his impressive clay performances above all others. (It will be a wait for the clay court singles titles, since the grass courts are up next, but only for a several weeks. But mark my word, it won’t be too long before that record makes its way on to his private turntable of titles.) If he takes home the prize this Sunday, he will have a mammoth lead in the Roland Garros championships list with 9. Even after a victory on Sunday, he will still be one less than Guillermo Villas’ clay court tournament wins in the Open Era. (Villas’ impressive record is 46.)
This morning, as if on cue, the sun came out and brought along a bonus – the wind. It finally settled into a pattern that most closely resembled a gentle breeze. The best thing about it was that it didn’t transform itself into a cyclone on the court, as it had earlier in the week.
As suspected, Novak Djokovic defeated Ernests Gulbis and became the first of Sunday’s final contestants to be decided. Looking back, the 6-3, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 scoreboard posting that was visible as the men walked off court, seemed as if it should have shown a closer margin, From the outset of the match, it seemed clear that the affable young man from Serbia would be the winner, but the Latvian star, Gulbis, worked like a madman to try and conjure up a bit of magic that would take away the momentum of those first two sets. Djokovic won them both quite handily. For a brief moment after the third set, it looked as if Gulbis had a chance, but, after 2 hours and 34 minutes, that chance was erased and the match went down in the books with Djokovic’s name in the win column.
Gulbis managed 13 aces to Djokovic’s 9, but his unforced errors sold him down the river – 44 to Djokovic’s 25. After the match, he was circumspect, “I really understood every feeling and I learned from it and I tried to, enjoy it. And even if it’s like negative emotions, like being nervous and being tense, I tried to even enjoy that and understand it, to understand how I can be better next time.” There will be many next times for Gulbis. He has reached for the brass ring on the merry-go-round of tennis and next time around he has a good chance to hold on.
Most of the time, Djokovic looked as if he was playing at a pace of his own choosing, (sans the third set). In the fourth set, he ironed out the rough edges that had allowed him to lose that one set, but he picked himself up and continued to play his game, not dwelling on the inconsistencies that led him to lose that third set.
Speaking about the upcoming Sunday match, he said, “We all know how good he [Nadal] is on this court. But, he’s not unbeatable. You know, winning against him last couple of matches in the final, big events, definitely gives me the confidence that I can do it again.” He should hold that thought. Nadal and Djokovic were 1 and 2 in the ATP Rankings before the tournament began. The draw seemed to be spot on this time.
Virtually as soon as that match cleared and the television camera did their perfunctory up close and personal interviews, it was a switch to the Nadal/Murray contest. Murray is usually as pugnacious as a fighter. He wasn’t today. The match took a mere 1 hour 40 minutes for Nadal to completely disassemble Murray’s game. It looked to me as if he simply gave up and decided to save his strength for the grass courts.
After the match, Murray was asked, “At what point of the match did you sense that it was going to be a very difficult afternoon?” He wasted no time with his answer, “Well, I knew it was going to be a difficult afternoon obviously before I went on the court. I was expecting a lot of long rallies. I was expecting to do a lot of running. And, yeah, I just – yeah, I mean, it was a tough day for me. It was a bad, bad day.”
The match lasted a total of 1 hour and 40 minutes. It must have felt like eternity to Murray, because everything he tried didn’t work. He got just a tick over half of his first serves in play. He had close to twice as many unforced errors as Nadal and the same for forced errors. It was one of the worst matches he has played since becoming a contender.
Nadal, however is looking forward to his match-up with Djokovic on Sunday. He spoke after the match and seemed pleased with his progress in this year’s clay court season. He said that each day he had done a few things better. When asked if he had learned things better, he said, “About the world, about life, yes. About tennis I am trying to still learn every day, but always a challenge, no?” From the looks of things, it appears that he’s just about got it. Yes?
Topics: Andy Murray, Cheryl Jones, Ernests Gulbis, French Open, Novak Djokovic, Paris, Rafael Nadal, Roland Garros, Tennis, Tennis News
FRIDAY @ROLANDGARROS: MURRAY & GULBIS GO OUT & RAFA & NOVAK ARE SET FOR THE FINALS BY CHERYL JONES – http://t.co/951pLN76bV #RG14 #tennis