There is no weapon in tennis like the return of serve. This is true for at least two reasons. The first: There’s nothing more deflating, more flattening, more humbling for an opponent than to have his or her best serve rocketed back. A player, at every level, gets used to the rewards of hitting a good serve. It’s an ace. The ball clanks off the returner’s frame. Sometimes, a bloop return barely makes it over the net, setting up a fun and easy put-away. Feel my power!
When you hit that same cracking serve and, before you can even blink, the ball skids at your own feet, too hot to deal with, well, that will make you question every decision you have ever made in your life.
The second reason is more ethereal: Service return comes from God, like bursts of inspiration, or when the lightbulb appears over your head. Think about the return of serve: How do you even work on it? A player can change serving motions, rework the forehand and backhand, endure countless speed drills to improve movement, and work hard on hitting crisper volleys. But the return of serve is not a sum of technique and practice. It’s some ineffable combination of instinct and reaction and reflex and timing and luck. The greatest returners of them all seem more like magicians than athletes.
Jimmy Connors is widely regarded as the pioneer who made the return of serve an art form. He used a comically tiny trampoline of a racket called the T2000, with a head roughly the size of Canadian quarter, and he hurled his entire body at the serve as if he was trying to smash himself through a locked door. At his best, he made the game’s best servers afraid to unleash their best, because they realized that the harder they hit their serve, the harder it came back.
Andre Agassi came next in the returners’ procession. It has never been easy to sum up Agassi’s greatness as a player. His own serve was nothing. He didn’t move as well as some, and he wasn’t always in prime condition. His net game was uninspiring. The one Grand Slam title that seemed out of his reach was Wimbledon, where the grass was lightning fast and the tournament had long belonged to serve-and-volley bombers like Boris Becker and Pat Cash and Stefan Edberg and Michael Stich (and, soon, Pete Sampras).
But Agassi was a returning genius, and his run through Becker, John McEnroe and Goran Ivanisevic in 1992 became the standard for what a player can do when armed with will, poise and a missile-launcher for returning serves.
There have been other great returners, men and women. Seles and Lendl, Courier and Capriati, Graf and Rafa and Murray and both Williams sisters, but particularly Serena, who returns serves so hard that sometimes it seems like she might blast through the tennis ball and turn it into dust.
Still, there has never been anyone who returned serve like Novak Djokovic.
On Sunday in Australia, Djokovic took another step in his inexorable march to becoming the greatest tennis player of all time, by obliterating Rafael Nadal 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 in the men’s final. There will always be those who will lean toward Roger Federer in the greatest-ever race (or Nadal, or go more old school with Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg or Rod Laver). But Djokovic is 31 years old, and he is on his way to mathematically eliminating all other possibilities. For now, Federer has the lead with 20 major titles (and Nadal has 17). But unless something drastic changes, Djokovic, with 15 Grand Slam titles, including the last three, could catch both of them by the end of 2020.
And he likely will finish his career with other insurmountable arguments, such as the Masters 1000 record and a winning record against all three of the great players of his day, Federer, Nadal, and Andy Murray. Djokovic already is the only man in the Open Era to win the four slams consecutively. If he wins the French Open this year, he will do it again. He will also become the only male player of the Open Era to have the double career slam, two wins at each event.
But such talk is conceptual, and what Djoker did to Rafa on Sunday was anything but conceptual. Djokovic dismantled tennis’ great warrior in such a complete way that it’s hard to see how Nadal ever fully recovers. The precedent that comes to mind is 1984, when John McEnroe devastated Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon (6-1, 6-1, 6-2 was the famous score) and though Connors played for another decade or so, he never threw himself at returns with quite the same abandon, and he never won another tournament of note, and he never reached another Grand Slam final.
Nadal might be fine; it’s clay season next, and clay turns Nadal into a superhero. But he won’t soon forget what Djoker did to him on Sunday. Djokovic made just nine unforced errors in the entire match (this after making just FIVE unforced errors in his demolishing of Lucas Pouille in the semifinals — “You feel like in a different dimension,” Djoker said after that one), and this was on a windy day. Nadal could not do anything at all against the Djokovic serve; Rafa won just one point as a returner the entire first set and forced one break point the entire match.
But, more than anything, Djokovic returned serve.
This was particularly shattering for Rafa. He had tweaked his serve specifically for the Australian Open. He knew that to win on a hard court again — he has won one hard court Grand Slam title since 2013 — he needed to get a few more free points. So he flattened out his serve a little bit, went for more aggressive angles, and the difference was striking. He held 66 consecutive service games and won every set he played.
Against the veteran slugger Tomas Berdych, Rafa held 82% of his first serves.
Against the talented young American Frances Tiafoe, he held 84%.
And against the Greek phenom Stefanos Tsitsipas — who had beaten Federer — he held 85%.
Djokovic said that he was impressed by how Nadal, after all these years, could so wildly improve his serve.
“At the same time,” Djokovic said, not arrogantly but simply speaking cold hard truth, “it’s quite different playing against me.”
Yes. On Sunday, just about every Rafa serve came back at him fast and angry and with purpose. Djokovic varies his returns the way that Greg Maddux used to vary his pitches. Sometimes, he would rip one up the middle at Nadal’s feet. Sometimes, he would float the ball so deep that Nadal had to go two or three steps behind the baseline and somehow generate enough power to regain the advantage. Sometimes Djokovic would seem to lose patience and just whack the return for a clean winner.
It took only a game before he had Nadal’s mind scattered. At one point, ESPN showed an amazing graphic: In their 52 meetings, Djokovic had a 17-1 record when he won 40% or more of Nadal’s first serves. The winning percentage seems about right; the amazing part was that Djokovic had won 40% of Nadal’s first serves EIGHTEEN TIMES.
Make it 19 times. On Sunday, Nadal won only 51% of the points on his first serve. He was broken five times.
When Djokovic took the court, there were a handful of boos from the Australian crowd. Not many, but enough to hear. It’s something that Djokovic has dealt with all his career. It’s timing mostly. He crashed the party. Federer came first, and he was so graceful, so likable, so brilliant in every way. David Foster Wallace celebrated his genius in one of the greatest tennis articles ever written, “Federer as Religious Experience.” There were times when it seemed like Fed floated six inches off the ground. You couldn’t blame anyone for loving him.
And then came Nadal, brooding, quirky, but likable too, with those sleeveless shirts and those weightlifter biceps and his Terminator-like resolve to chase down every ball. Nadal hit the ball with such heavy topspin that it seemed to bounce off air molecules. He grunted because he meant it. You couldn’t blame anyone for loving him either. With Nadal and Federer, there was no room left for anybody else on the marquee.
Djokovic came on the scene around 2007, a phenom, the youngest man to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, but you might remember that he didn’t come on the scene alone. Andy Murray is exactly one week older than Djoker, and their games are similar enough that it might be hard for a casual fan to spot the differences. Djokovic won the Australian Open in 2008, and Murray reached the U.S. Open Final the same year, and if any one of these young players was going to dare challenge Fed and Rafa, most people probably wanted it to be Murray, because of his quest to become the first player from Great Britain to win Wimbledon.
Djokovic would be there for that one.
So, Djokovic was cast as the heavy. He was destined to become the player who pierced Nadal’s invincibility of the French Open clay. He was destined to deny Federer at Wimbledon in 2014, again in 2015 and then at the U.S. Open that same year. Yes, he was the one to lose to Murray at Wimbledon, but he beat Murray five other times in major finals. When it came to the other three — not to mention lovable players like Juan Martin del Potro — Djokovic never seemed to get a home match.
Always there have been boos. There have been grumbles. The crowd’s favor has naturally gravitated toward his opponents. It’s a shame. By all appearances, Djokovic seems a charming and funny guy. He’s gracious in victory and defeat. He’s widely regarded as the best tennis imitator out there. He’s a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has donated a tremendous amount of money and time to early childhood education.
But most of all, Djokovic — perhaps more than any player in tennis — reveals himself in every match. He screams at himself. He complains to himself. He rolls his eyes. He tears his shirt. He looks to the heavens. He acts like the world is against him. He asks — after particularly brilliant points — for the crowd to appreciate what they have just seen. To hit those kinds of returns of serve, Djoker has to take himself to another place, another dimension as he says, where he can slow down time and predict the future and turn the beat around. He allows everyone to not only see what he does but to feel just a little bit of what he feels.
Almost nobody thought we would see this again from Novak. A year ago, he lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open to an unseeded South Korean player named Chung Hyeon. It was the seventh consecutive Grand Slam event that he did not win, and then he went to the French Open and was beaten by an unseeded Italian player named Marco Cecchinato. And it was borderline crazy to believe that Novak Djokovic would ever again be the best tennis player in the world.
But it all happened so fast. Djokovic won Wimbledon, where he outlasted Nadal in a breathtaking semifinal. He followed that by dominating the U.S. Open, winning his last 15 sets, and then came this Australian Open and Sunday and perhaps the greatest tennis that Novak Djokovic or anyone else has ever played.
The last point was the whole match. Nadal served hard into Djokovic’s backhand, and Djoker cracked it hard and deep, just another brilliant return. Nadal had no choice but to step back and just flip the ball back over. Djokovic smacked a forehand deep and Rafa tried to do too much, hit it well long.
“When he is playing that well,” Rafa would say, “I think I needed something else, something extra.”
And in a few words, Nadal explained Djokovic’s brilliance. At his best, Novak turns your serve inside out and leaves you breathlessly reaching for something else, something extra, something that surely isn’t there.
I’ve only played tennis sparingly (although I wish I’d played as a kid — I think I could have been pretty good), but I’ve watched quite a lot. So this is the perspective of a spectator more than a player:
Even if Djokovic ends up with 23 majors and Federer is done at 20, I’d still consider Federer the best ever. It’s for a totally subjective and almost certainly dead wrong reason, coming from that spectator perspective. When Federer is playing his absolute best, he looks otherworldly. It looks like no one else could possibly play the shots he plays no matter how much they practiced. When Nadal and Djokovic play their absolute best, they are spectacular, fantastic, phenomenal — but it just looks harder for them. It looks like they are really throwing everything they have into it, and it looks like if you could just practice long enough and hard enough (and be gifted with born ability as well, of course) you could maybe do the things they’re doing.
That’s the biggest difference between the three for me, and is also the reason I think Federer will be remembered more fondly than Nadal and Djokovic years down the road even if he falls behind in the majors count and is no longer considered the GOAT. It feels like we could see someone else play exactly like Djokovic or exactly like Nadal and also be highly successful — it doesn’t feel like there will ever be someone else who plays like Federer.
I love how federer looks smooth as in poetry. However, I am the biggest fan of Djoker more than anyone not just tennis but as a human how beautiful he is. Djoker never has any special shot like Stan’s backhand or Nadal’s spin. He plays on percentage. Basically put the ball back in the court. No special weapon, just smartly place the ball in the court that opponent can’t return. Very simple technique. In sports, simplicity matters. When Nadal was asked he said I need to change big things for evolve during his press conference but Djoker said I just do the same thing although tactically different for different people. That is one mistake that many sportspeople make just try to overdo things. Djoker does the simple things right. One more thing I have to add to what this author said is yes no one can return the serve like Djoker both in men’s and women’s. Also, I got a new person to cheer for in Osaka. I never liked anyone after Graf retired. So now I have to make time for women’s tennis too. Osaka is simply the best. I said that about Djoker too to my friends back in 2007 but no one listened to me.
Hi Joe, long time no see! I’ve never commented on your blog but I always look forward to your writing about the aspects of his game and character, especially after your post-Wimbledon piece here: https://joeposnanski.com/the-novak-principle/
Basically, I find you super #relatable when it’s about Novak, because I also find myself a crazy Djokovic fan every time he plays.
I didn’t think you’ve been following Australian Open (understandably so because of the time difference) so this gem of a writing is a lovely surprise, one that touches a very technical aspect of the game, and one very essential when you have followed Djokovic’s career: the return of serve. And it is a fantastic, refreshing read.
Narratively, Novak has burst into scene as a youngster, has blitzed to his first No. 1 and taken everyone by storm, and has commanded the tour with so much authority you wondered whether he’ll ever be beaten again (Spoiler alert: he did). But it’s been very interesting to see how he’s covered in sportswriting after his resurrection- new for him, narratively. There’s a new feel in some of the articles, that doesn’t fall back to early impressions of young Novak or comparisons to other tennis greats.
That’s what I love about this article a lot. Return of Serve is hard. Heck, it’s something that’s impossible and improbable to master, because there’s always so much luck involved, so many variables you can’t predict. It doesn’t matter how much you practice, you’ll always get it more wrong than right. And yet, Djokovic has made his mastery of it a trademark of his game. He is as always, the one who masters the impossible and the improbable, without the help of a miracle.
There’s a word that’s used to describe Djokovic more and more, especially after he completed the Masters 1000 set, because it’s coincidentally in synergy with the branding: Master. Mastery. Masterful. I think, at the moment, this word describes Novak Djokovic at his purest- he’s a master of the tennis craft, perhaps better than any other player that has come before him. It’s not a slight to the genius higher being that is Federer, nor to the ultimate fighter that is Nadal- Djokovic simply co-exists with them, excellence in his own right.
Thank you for sharing your writing with us.
Joe, I too feel like Nole will pass Fed. But then a voice nags at me, your voice talking about Tiger Woods, and about age, about why you did not think Woods would pass Jack even when everyone else thought it was a given. Novak needs to win, what, six more slams – a Hall of Fame career in itself! – after age 32. I look at the current opposition and I see that he is far above it, but still, I wonder if you are falling prey to the very fallacy you recognized re: Tiger?
Totally agree with this. It’s certainly possible that Novak will win more slams than anyone ever has in history after he turns 32. In fact, as of 2014, the combined TOTAL number of Grand Slam titles won by ALL people in history at or after age 32 was 6, so that would be a pretty high bar: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/happy-birthday-nadal-youre-probably-too-old-to-pass-federer/
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Maybe things have changed this decade? With improved emphasis on conditioning, etc, both the Big Three and Serena have had remarkable results in their 30’s, and it could well be that we are in a new era of extended health. Heck – literally no man currently UNDER 30yo has ever won a Grand Slam title! (This has been true since Cilic turned 30, and is completely mind-blowing given how few titles have historically been won at 30+.) But… Murray is one week older than Djokovic and appears, sadly, to be done. Sampras retired at 31 due to what he called “the grind”. I wonder what the reasonable odds are as of right now for Djokovic ending up with over 20 titles?
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Also, separately, as a longtime tennis player (played some in college a few decades ago) who did wake up in time to watch this match as of the start of the second set… Nadal played bad. Badly enough that if it turns out he was injured, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Tennis is zero-sum, and assuredly some of this was due to Djokovic, but I didn’t think he was clearly playing other-worldly tennis. I mean, he might have been – you just couldn’t tell b/c Nadal was making seemingly uncharacteristic errors early in rallies. Coming in, Djokovic had shown more cracks than Nadal, though it’s subtle (dropped sets to Shapovalov and Medvedev, with quite a few errors in the Medvedev match). Nadal’s depantsing of Tsitsipas was probably the most impressive result either of them had coming into the final.
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All that said, it is certainly possible that Djokovic’s peak tennis performance is the best that tennis has ever been played. Probably that would be 2015-2016 Djoker rather than now, but still, he’s just a remarkable machine – the prior Djoker/Nadal Aus Open final was a ludicrous exhibition of sustained tennis greatness. Maybe Djokovic was at or above that level this past weekend, but I couldn’t tell b/c Nadal wasn’t up to pushing him on that day. The French will be fascinating – assuming good health for both.
(Sorry, “all people in history” in my first paragraph above should, I think , read “all men in history”. Andy Murray would surely have pointed that out.)
Huey, sorry. You quoted an article written in 2014 when you said (meant) “the combined TOTAL number of Grand Slam titles won by ALL people [sic-men] in history at or after age 32 was 6. That article of course did not include the one Agassi won in 03, nor the four won since 2014 by Federer and Nadal. So let’s edit to say the total combined wins by men beyond age 32 is 10, and 3 of those by one player. In that context, it really doesn’t seem impossible for Novak to get 5 or 6 IF his health cooperates. Fed won 1 at 35 and 2 at 36 . If Novak matches that, then all he has to do is win 3 in the next three years, then match Fed for magic number 21.
I’m well aware of the three Fed wins since that article – I’m a Fed fanatic. (Sorry, it was clunky to quote a 2014 article, but I remember reading it vividly and thought it was fascinating at the time, and illuminating for this discussion.) Why do you say that article “of course did not include” Agassi’s 2003 win, though? It mentions it in the text… You’re right, though, that I forgot Nadal turned 32 one week before he won the 2018 French, so it’s now 10 (I thought 9), but my point was that as of 2014 (actually as of 2017) it was 6. 6 is a lot of slams! Fed’s 3 at 32+ is the most in history. 6 is as many as Becker or Edberg won in their entire careers.
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It’s certainly possible. It feels likely. I’m just saying, it’s probably less likely than it feels after having watched that last match, since only one man has ever won even half that many Grand Slams after that age, and that man might be the best player of all time and certainly has had the best career at 32+ of all time. I would venture to say that if he “only” wins 3 in the next 3 years, as you suggest, he has VERY little chance. His best chance is to win 4-5 in the next two years, I’d say. Beyond that, damn, it’s hard. The best argument is probably that Roger and Rafa are less likely to give him as much of a fight in the next couple years, since they’re even older, and the next generation just isn’t good enough to stop him yet, so he might win 4-5 of the next 7 before the end of 2020. But… that would mean winning 7-8 out of 10 (since he’s won the last 3). And that would be the best stretch in the Open Era, wouldn’t it? Not impossible… but far from a sure thing.
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If you laid even odds, I’d think the smart money would have to be that he doesn’t get 21. But I wouldn’t want to bet on it either way. I completely agree with the OP that Joe’s Tiger Woods analysis should apply here. It feels inevitable, because he’s playing better than we recall anyone else playing at this age, and he seems invincible after a match like that. It’s just that, he’s not invincible. It’s not inevitable. He’s aging like we all are. And if it happens, if he goes from 15 to 21, it would be even more impressive in some ways than the career he’s mounted to this point.
“It’s certainly possible. It feels likely. I’m just saying, it’s probably less likely than it feels after having watched that last match, since only one man has ever won even half that many Grand Slams after that age…”
But it is a different time now. Teenagers used to win majors. Now, with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic (and Serena) the winner at any given major is more likely to be 31+ than a teenager. That would have been unthinkable in the 1990s, when teenagers named Sampras, Seles, Hingis and Serena won majors–or the 1980s, when teens named Wilander, Becker, Edberg, Chang, Graf and Aranxta won.
The last teens to win majors were Kuznetsova (2004 U.S. Open) and Nadal (2005 Roland Garros).
I think your argument that “only one man has won even half that many after that age” is akin to saying “It’s virtually impossible to make 250 3-pointers in a season. It’s only been done 12 times.” But when we look closer, we see that nine of those 12 have been in this decade, because the game is so different. Thus it is not terribly unlikely there will be more such seasons.
Eh, I disagree, but we’ll see. I do think the landscape has changed. But I think doubling Fed’s total of post-32 titles is a tall order. Djokovic’s dominance is predicated on court coverage, relentlessness, and that return of serve; he doesn’t have a single overwhelming weapon. I’m not sure how well that will age. I think if he doesn’t win 4 more by the end of the 2021 Aus Open, he won’t get to 6. I don’t expect him to win 3 at age 35+ like Fed did, and like nobody else ever has.
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Three-pointers are a strategy change. Aging is harder to strategize against. Sure, folks are taking better care of their bodies, but the end still comes, and sooner than people think. I think for a game like Novak’s, it will happen sooner that it now seems, too. 7 best-of-five-setters are a lot of punishment. If he loses enough of an edge that he goes from winning those early-round matches in 80 minutes, to a tense 4-setter, that accumulates.
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I’ll bet the under, but I’ll enjoy watching him try.
Two things I noticed watching this match. One related to Djokovic, the other not. Regarding Djokovic, he broke Nadal. Just broke him. Nadal was on fire in this tournament, and even so, during this match the announcers kept referring to how Nadal didn’t have it against Djokovic. He didn’t have his “legs”, he was making too many unforced errors, etc. Finally, I think McEnroe uttered the most telling statement, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rafa give up” (something like that).
Djokovic broke Nadal.
The other thing I noticed was how fast the challenges occurred. When someone challenged a call, it took less than 10 seconds to get the answer. I counted, less than 10 seconds. It would sometimes take both Nadal and Djokovic longer than that to bounce the ball repeatedly before they served.
Someone tell the NFL, NBA, MLB and NCAA that it is indeed possible to review things quickly.
I’m a longtime Federer fan and agree with Joe that Novak is on an inexorable march to Greatest of All Time status. Even after Federer’s wonderful, surprising resurgence of 2017-18, there is the inevitable feeling he will end up third in majors, and third best of all time.
Despite the reports of Djokovic’s demise, it was not at all surprising to see him come back. The other two had even longer major droughts:
Federer: 2012 Wimbledon-2017 Australian–15 majors, 0 wins, 3 finals, 4 losses before QF, 2 absent.
Nadal: 2014 French Open-2017 French Open–9 majors, 0 wins, 1 final, 6 losses before QF, 2 absent.
Djokovic: 2016 RG–2018 Wimbledon–7 majors, 0 wins, 1 final, 3 losses before QF, 1 absent.
Enjoyed your insightful piece on Novak’s return of serve and your comments on other great returners. One bothersome note, though, was your statement that: “Djokovic already is the only man in the Open Era to win the four slams consecutively.” That’s only true if you don’t count the real McCoy calendar year slam achieved by the Rocket in 1969.
It is silly to suggest that Connors changed the way he returned serve, just because he was thrashed in 1984 Wimbledon final. Even if Connors had missed that one match (say, due to food poisoning or hurting ankle on the day of the match) his career would have followed the exact same path. Eck did not start pitching differently just because Kirk Gibson hit one memorable homer against him. And no player, let alone one with Connors’ savvy, would return player A’s serve differently (‘without the same abandon’) just because player M was in sublime form in one match.
Even the normally cautious Rex Bellamy (Tennis writer for London Times) wondered after 1984 US Open whether McEnroe had opened up an unbridgeable gap. In 1985 players knew that they were playing a different McEnroe and played accordingly.
He is the best to ever play but not the best in his time. I believe it was Mary Carillo who said something like this a number of years ago because Federer couldn’t beat Nadal.All special players to remember for their great and wonderful gifts. Don’t forget, Pancho ,maybe the best ever.Is Margret Court better than Sirena at 24 than she is at 23? I don’t think so.It is not always the numbers.Ask any one in their 70’s who was the greatest pitcher ever and you will often hear Sandy Koufax,He didn’t have the career numbers ,but oh my what a curveball.
in high school I lettered in tennis twice, favored Rod Laver, then Jimmy (my age), and if only I’d learned the two-handed backhand…
one day I opened the New Yorker and unwittingly wandered into the longest magazine article imaginable, about a match between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe, if I recall, written by Roger Angell, if I recall.
this article is as good as that. I’m heading out to Paribas next month just because of it.