Wimbledon Final Analysis
Novak Djokovic defeated Nick Kyrgios 4/6 6/3 6/4 7/6 to lift his 7th Wimbledon crown and 21st major overall. It was a masterclass performance from the Serb, blunting the Kyrgios serve and turning the screws from the baseline with controlled aggression.
Before the match I wrote this of Djokovic:
There’s not a lot I will say here. Everyone knows his game so well. He’s going to make a lot of returns and a lot of balls that most players simply don’t make. His two keys:
Extend the rallies.
First-serve percentage. If you can keep Kyrgios quiet on return games he will feel the pressure that little bit more on serve. The game tomorrow is about suppressing Nick’s chances to create something. Clinical, efficient tennis is exactly what Novak is known for. Tomorrow he must stick to it relentlessly.
For Kyrgios:
Win the first set, win the crowd. Three keys:
Serve above 70% first-serves in. He needs free points, otherwise, the pressure is going to be too much over five sets.
Take chances on return. Make it messy and don’t give Novak rhythm.
Win the first set.
To both their credit, they managed to execute and play a great level of tennis for most of this encounter. Kyrgios ended up serving 73% first serves in and firing 30 aces, but it still wasn’t enough. Like most slam finals of recent years, there were swings in momentum that hinged on big points, with the Serb coming up trumps on both serve and return. Kyrgios will be ruing two crucial games that turned the tide against him; returning to stay in the second set at 3-5 he let a 0-40 chance slip, and serving to stay in the third set at 4-5 he was broken from 40-0 up.
For much of the encounter I had the feeling that it was a match of who could make the other player think too much; Kyrgios during the point, Djokovic between.
Djokovic blunted back so many ridiculous returns—130mph bombs came back to the feet of Kyrgios with inevitable regularity, with the rest of the point often played in tentative disbelief by the Aussie, or perhaps distracted by thoughts that were made known after the point. If the commentators weren’t quick to comment, Kyrgios was. A few quips to his box on several occasions:
“I have to do that? I have to do that to win a point?
‘Do you guys know how hard it is to ace the guy three times? And you’re just sitting there like it’s normal!”
“It took him two hours and twenty-one minutes for him to miss a second-serve return.”
Kyrgios always plays with chaos. When he is winning—as was the case in the first set—it’s happening during the point: the underarm serves, the drop shots, the tweeners, the slapshot. If he starts to lose, he creates chaos between points; the mouth starts to run through all manner of complaints, but it’s part of the trick all the same, and today was no different. At one point Kyrgios asked a chatty gal to be kicked out. The umpire asked, which one is she? Kyrgios replied:
“the one that looks like she had about 700 drinks, bro.”
In contrast to the circus, Djokovic wants complete order. Quiet, please. Rally back-and-forth across the baseline, the longer the better, until Djokovic’s game inevitably irons out all the luck and chance that allows an opponent to hang with him.
Kyrgios’ tactics and execution in the first set were perfect. He kept the rallies short, mixed it up, and served bombs. Djokovic had trouble reading the serve early on, and Kyrgios was humming along at 77% first serves in. The racquet was loud, the mouth was shut.
The first turning point happened with Djokovic serving at 1-1 30-30 in the second set. They played the first two really extended rallies of the match, and both went the way of the Serb. It’s almost as if those two points finally allowed Djokovic to grease the groundstrokes fully, and he broke the Kyrgios serve the very next game to love.1
One of the hardest things about playing Djokovic is the difficulty of winning important points.
As the occasion grows, the style of tennis of most players converges towards the safe and consistent style that Djokovic epitomizes, and so solving the Djokovic game presents players with a puzzle; as you get closer to beating him, you instinctively tend to improve his odds of winning points, and kill your own.
It’s nearly impossible to play the unconscious brand of chaotic tennis required to unsettle him in big moments, even for Nick Kyrgios. Kyrgios, like so many others, enters the graveyard of giants who fell victim to their consciousness; on big points he played it safe, perhaps entertaining the “what if’s” that can run through a player’s head when on the precipice of something great. Or perhaps he thought the occasion would get to Djokovic, the pressure of being favourite against a maverick weighing heavily, and so he rallied. Whatever the reason, it played into Djokovic’s hands.
The general pattern of play saw Djokovic look to serve to the Kyrgios forehand, which is a self-confessed weaker side and one I touched on in their match preview. Kyrgios made few inroads on the Djokovic serve in sets three and four, and he was hanging on by a thread on his own serve by this stage, with the Serb growing confident and returning Kyrgios’ serves with more accuracy and authority. As I have touched on in prior pieces on the often invisible advantages that technical superiority brings out:
“but there is a cost to everything, and the cost is going to be consistency and accuracy.” The percentages are going to ever so slightly favour Djokovic, and it might not really pay off until the pressure rises, but when it does, these costs are amplified. The screams of frustration that bubble over after missing may convey a mental breakdown, but the origins of these ‘mental collapses’ are often baked into the technique.
As I said in the preview, Kyrgios gets away with his forehand return because he has great hands, but you need more than just ‘getting by’ to beat Djokovic at Wimbledon in this form. You need to be great across the board, at least defensively, and as well as Kyrgios played, in the end, it was the inevitability of Djokovic’s game that won out, again. I can’t see anything changing in the coming slams he is allowed to compete in. Over five sets you can’t chance your way through a player this well-balanced.
Many casual fans ask this question. Why is Novak so good? As the tweet above says (correctly) he doesn’t have the biggest serve, or most dangerous forehand, or heavy spin. So, what gives? My answer is that while he doesn’t have the biggest margins on his shots (his spin rates are unremarkable), he has so much margin in his technique; he is so quiet in the wrist and with his racquet head. His worst tennis is still really good. I’ve touched on his forehand and backhand before.2 An excerpt from that piece:
On a 7/10 day you just want to cover the bread-and-butter elements: make returns, reduce double faults, play through the cross-court on groundstrokes. Hustle and grind and perhaps give yourself a chance to find better tennis over the course of a match. It’s not always pretty and it won’t make the highlight reels, but it is the necessary plumbing that great tennis rests upon. Everyday a player wakes up and must calibrate their game to the opponent’s style, the court, the balls, the weather, and how their body feels. Some days it comes easy, the racquet feels like an extension of the arm, the ball seems big and slow, and you feel in control. Other days everything feels foreign and just finding decent tennis is a battle. Great technique makes that battle easier. It makes your 7/10 game better than the opponent’s 7/10 game, and in the end it is reflected in the rankings.
While Djokovic’s ranking doesn’t reflect his game due to political reasons, he is the undisputed king of Wimbledon. A final quote from Kyrgios:
“He’s a bit of a God. I thought I played well, I’m not gonna lie.”
Djokovic broke Kyrgios for the first time in 29 service games, across three matches.
His serve has also improved over the years, and he has become a great spot server.
the caption for the gif of that 24 shot rally should read “elicits”, not “illicits”. great write up as usual!