Well, it looks like this star-crossed final is going to keep all of us on the edge of our seats for a little while longer. It appears that the rain will fall until around 7:15 PM, after which the weather-guessers are predicting clear skies.
I'm reluctant to say much about the suspended match—keep my powder dry for the wrap-up, if you know what I mean. But my feeling so far is that Novak Djokovic is up against it, for the reason I brought up this morning. Sure he got that much-needed extra day off. But in the big picture, all that does is get him back onto what we might call a normal Grand Slam schedule (alternating days of play and rest). And if you look at how players perform after winning debilitating matches 48 hours before (see "N" for Nishikori), you'll understand why the combination of lingering physical fatigue and—ironically—a loss of emotional momentum could have a big effect on Djokovic's performance. I thought I already saw signs of that in the first set and a half.
Rafael Nadal took the momentum into the locker room with him, but how the emotional climate and rain delay will influence him is a less alluring question than how Djokovic will respond. I seem to remember a Wimbledon match that was marred by rain delays, and Nadal handled that pretty darned well. Nadal has a set in hand and he's turned the tables around on Djokovic in the second set; he also goes into the delay with a lot more experience of such distractions and travails than does Djokovic. That tells me that the hill Novak is trying to climb is getting steeper and more slippery. How would you like to come out a set down to Rafa Nadal and serving to hold at 30-all, four-all?
The next serve Novak hits will be down the barrel of a break point, leaving Nadal to serve for it with a 5-4 lead. So what do you do, after the brief warm-up: swing from the heels and risk making an error born of over-eagerness, or take a little off and stand accused later of playing too defensively?
I look for Nadal to play relatively conservatively at the resumption. He's in control. He's the favorite. He's the guy with a set in hand. He'll be thinking, If Novak wants it, let him step up and wrench it out of my hands.
-- Pete