At Paris Olympics, Novak Djokovic earns milestone victory in Rafael Nadal rivalry

If there was a shot that summed up the 60th, and possibly final, meeting between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, it came at the very end, with the next-to-last swing of a racquet.

Djokovic was serving for the win at 5-4 in the second set, and the score was 30-30. He had dominated play for the vast majority of the afternoon, with razor-sharp returns that landed near the baseline, and blazing on-the-rise backhands into the corners. At one stage he led 6-1, 4-1, with two breaks of serve in hand. But he may not have been ready for it all to go so smoothly against Nadal in Court Philippe Chatrier, a place where he had lost eight of 10 to the Spaniard, dating back to 2006. Instead of calmly closing out a blow-out win, the way he would have against virtually any other opponent on any other court, Djokovic got nervous, lost a little of his precision, and let Nadal back in.

Still, Djokovic found his way to the finish line, and served for the win at 5-4. But again he got nervous. He hit a forehand into the net, and another forehand wide. At 30-30, he missed his first serve. He rolled his second serve into Nadal’s backhand, Nadal lofted a high return…and it landed five feet long. Rafa reacted by throwing his arms out to his side and looking up to his player box in exasperation. There was no rhyme or reason for him to have missed, but miss he had. By a lot. A few seconds later, Djokovic hit an ace to complete a 6-1, 6-4 win, and maintain his head-to-head edge over Rafa, 31-29.

I think we will appreciate this match very much. I think our rivalry and I think for the sport itself. I think there was a lot of attention and interest directed from sports towards us. It is unfortunate for him that he wasn’t at his best, but I did everything I could to make him feel uncomfortable.  Novak Djokovic

As I wrote at the top, that return error served as a pretty good summary of Nadal’s performance as a whole. He missed shots he may never have missed before in his 100-plus matches at Roland Garros. Forehands sailed toward the back fence. Routine backhands nosedived into the net. One second serve almost landed on his side of the court. And just when he had leveled the score at 4-4 in the second set, he tried and missed a rash, panicky, low-percentage down the line forehand to fall behind 15-40.

This was the level of play that Nadal had feared, and hinted at, over the last few weeks. Despite looking something like his old self in Bastad, and in his first-round win at the Olympics on Sunday, Rafa said he wasn’t feeling good about his game, especially his backhand. It took Djokovic to show us that Nadal’s skeptical self-assessment was dead on.

The Serb was every bit as good as the Spaniard was bad. He moved in for his backhands and robbed Rafa of time. He broke in the second game with a forehand return that surprised and handcuffed Nadal. He swung more freely and hammered his backhand with more confidence from one game to the next. Most important, after blowing his 4-1 lead in the second, he calmed down right away and broke at 4-4 with a deft backhand drop shot that Nadal had no chance to reach.

“At 4-1, I played a little sloppy service game and you can’t give any chances to Nadal because he is going to use them and come back,” Djokovic told reporters. “Especially on this court. The crowd getting involved but it was a crucial game at 4-4, trying to break his serve and then serve against the wind with new balls.”

“I think we will appreciate this match very much,” Djokovic said. “I think our rivalry and I think for the sport itself. I think there was a lot of attention and interest directed from sports towards us. It is unfortunate for him that he wasn’t at his best, but I did everything I could to make him feel uncomfortable.”

From a tennis perspective, the early days of the Olympics have belonged to Nadal. He carried the torch, and won a doubles match with Carlos Alcaraz. But with this win, Djokovic will take his turn in the spotlight. He has been trying to bring a gold medal back to Serbia since the 2008 Games in Beijing. Now, with Rafa and Jannik Sinner out of the picture, he may have his best chance.

For the second time in three months, Nadal makes an early, disappointing exit from the stadium he has owned for nearly two decades. This defeat was similar to his loss to Alexander Zverev at Roland Garros. In both cases, Nadal started slowly, managed to generate enough energy to nearly make it a match, but couldn’t keep that energy going long enough to ever take a lead.

Nadal will be back on this court, for the doubles with Alcaraz. Whether he’ll be back as a singles player is still in question. Either way, Father Time, as they say, remains undefeated. If he can beat Nadal at Roland Garros, he can beat anyone.