Where did this match rank among Djokovic’s greatest? “Right at the top,” he said, after destroying Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final to move ahead of Pete Sampras on the all-time Grand Slam titles list.
When Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi in the 2002 US Open final for his 14th Grand Slam title, not even a tennis clairvoyant could have predicted that only 17 years later a trio of superstars would surpass Sampras’ thenseemingly unbreakable record. Even more amazing, living legends Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, all in their 30s, are still racking up majors.
Fifty years after Rod Laver claimed his second Grand Slam — winning all four majors in a calendar year — Djokovic moved closer to his second “Djoker Slam,” four consecutive noncalendar major titles. The splendid Serb first achieved the rare feat in 2015–16. Now, after grabbing Wimbledon and the US Open last year and this Australian Open, he needs to capture the French Open to pull it off again. As they say in the land Down Under to express delight or excitement, “That’s a ripper!”
In tennis parlance elsewhere, one would say that Djokovic is “in the zone” — meaning he was playing sublime tennis. But that jargon is usually reserved for a given match, and only occasionally for a given tournament. Djokovic has played nearperfect tennis for the past seven months, going 434, and trouncing Kevin Anderson, Juan Martin del Potro and the great Nadal in the last three major finals.
In the greatest rivalry in men’s modern tennis history — only the Nadal vs Federer comes close to it — Djokovic led 2725. Nadal had a 95 match edge at the majors, though much of that came from his 61 advantage on the French Open clay, Nadal’s last win coming way back in 2014.
This story is from the February 23, 2019 edition of Sportstar.
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This story is from the February 23, 2019 edition of Sportstar.
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