Novak Djokovic had a point to prove – and he did just that. Rafael Nadal may have stolen his Number 1 ranking and is undeniably the King of Clay but Djokovic has yet again shown that he is the King of Indoor Tennis.
After the 8 crème de la crème of this tennis season battled it out all week at the ATP World Tour Finals, out from the smoke emerged the two finalists into a fully-packed O2 arena for the last tennis match of the year.
We knew we were in for a treat after seeing the first point; a beautiful forehand down the line from Djokovic who showed he was there to retain his title. If there’s one player who can resist the Spaniard’s back of the court attacks, it’s the current number 2; to that add a few very uncharacteristic mistakes from Nadal and you get a 6-3, 6-4 victory for Djokovic. I mean you can’t hope to win a match against the Joker with 4 double faults and only 9 winners.
Nole has been insisting that Nadal deserves to finish the year as World Number 1 and considering his impressive return from a 7-month injury consisting of 10 tournaments won, this may be true. But Nadal will have to do a perfect 2014 season if he wants to stay at the top spot as there are less than 1,000 ATP points between the two players.
After another exhausting and never ending tennis season, the players will now enjoy a well-deserved break. – well not quite yet for Djokovic. He still has a Davis Cup final to play before he can finally take a holiday with his adorable dog Pierre and his beautiful finance.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all to tennis this year, you will have noticed that this season has been full of surprises. If at the beginning of last year someone had told me that Rodger Federer would have just barely qualified for the ATP World Tour Finals and that he would finish the season ranked 6th in the world (his worst ranking in 10 years), I would have told them they were completely stupid and knew nothing about tennis. Furthermore, Andy Murray’s miraculous Wimbledon win, making a whole nation’s dreams come true after 77 years of waiting, and the valiant fight put up by David Ferrer, can certainly not go unnoticed.
Sadly this season has also been overshadowed by numerous highly debated cases of doping offences, giving the cyclists a run for their money.
However, no one can describe this season better than Nadal did after yesterday’s loss; when asked about his incredible rivalry with Djokovic he summed it up by simply saying, “I see him more than my mum.” And somehow I don’t think that is going to end anything soon…
One thing I am certain about is that if this year is anything to go by, next season should be well worth a watch; rendez- vous next January in Australia.
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