After taking a seven-week break to recover from his defeat to Daniil Medvedev in the US Open final, Novak Djokovic embarked on his Paris Masters campaign with the eyes of the tennis world upon him. It would be fair to say he coped. By reaching the final, Djokovic achieved his aim of finishing the year as world No 1 for an unprecedented seventh time. By winning it, he not only claimed his sixth title in Paris-Bercy, but also avenged his loss to Medvedev at Flushing Meadows and secured a record 37th Masters 1000 title.
It was the third meeting between the pair this season and the first outside the majors, Djokovic having won the Australian Open final in decisive fashion only for Medvedev to thwart the Serb’s bid to complete the grand slam in New York. This was a more tightly contested affair than either of those encounters, a battle of patience, endurance and wills in which no corner of the court remained untrodden, no angle, spin or trajectory unexplored.
Djokovic prevailed because, having reviewed footage from the US Open final, he recognised the need to bring greater variety to his game against an opponent whose ability to make returns and dictate from the baseline nullifies many of his own key strengths. Accordingly, there were drop shots, slices, short angles, and repeated changes of pace and direction from the Serb.
Above all, there was a concerted effort by Djokovic to take command of the contest from the net. In the first Paris final contested between the world’s top two players since 1990, when Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg were the antagonists, it was almost as though Djokovic were channelling the spirit of those multiple Wimbledon champions, the Serb charging into the forecourt 33 times and winning 76% of the points once there.
“That was definitely part of the tactical plan and strategy, to try to take away the time from Daniil, mix it up, put some variety in my game, play serve-and-volley and open the court,” said Djokovic, who, thinking as clearly after his 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory as he had been before it, paused to change into a dry shirt before embracing his children, Stefan and Tara, at courtside.
“He stands really far back, so he puts a lot of returns back in play. He’s just so good in staying in the point and making you suffer, and forcing you to make an unforced error. So you have to have, in a way, a controlled aggression against him. I managed to do that. I managed to have quite a good success rate at the net, particularly in those serve-and-volley points, when I was trying to take away time from him. I wanted to keep him on his toes, [so] that he doesn’t know what’s coming up next, to be a little bit unpredictable. You need to do it against him. He likes the pace, he likes the tempo.”
Medvedev, whose relationship with the crowd has veered towards the fractious on more than one occasion this week, belatedly resumed his role as the villain of the piece in the final set, angrily swatting a ball towards a spectator who disturbed his focus as he sought unsuccessfully to avoid falling behind by a double break. The Russian, who received a warning for his troubles, harnessed his anger to retrieve a break in the next game, but his frustration was clear.
“Just before I hit the serve – so you cannot really stop the motion – somebody screamed something,” said Medvedev. “I actually did make the serve, the return came back very fast. It’s not that only this that makes you miss the shot. I’m not going to be here saying I lost the point because of this, but it distracts you. So, yeah, I got mad because crucial, crucial moment, 5-2 for him, double break. Even if I manage to get the break back, we all know that against Novak it’s tough to come back from this score.”
For a set, Medvedev had withstood everything that came his way. Djokovic ran him from pillar to post early on, moving the ball quickly from corner to corner and probing the resilience of his forehand while carefully avoiding the kind of protracted crosscourt backhand rallies that had done such damage in New York. The Russian, who saw an early break cancelled out as Djokovic snatched 12 out of 14 points from 2-0 down, patiently absorbed it all. Having saved a break point in the sixth game with a forehand drive volley, Medvedev broke in the seventh, conjuring a wonderful backhand drop shot at full pelt. By the time he served out the set, Medvedev had made just four unforced errors to Djokovic’s 16.
The tide began to turn in the fourth game of the second set, when a successful challenge earned Djokovic a reprieve with Medvedev serving at 40-15. Having clawed his way back to deuce with some flawless play off the ground, Djokovic survived a titanic 18-shot rally, soaking up his opponent’s power to earn a break point which he converted with another show of baseline obduracy. The Serb was forced to dig deep again at 5-3, saving the first of three break points with a majestic drop volley off an ankle-high return as he drew on the full range of his attacking repertoire.
“There are definitely things I could have done better in terms of winning some points, some crucial points,” said Medvedev. “It was a really great match with a lot of good points where he was a little bit better, maybe did a few winners more, a few volley winners were good ones. He was better on the crucial points today. That made the big difference. I was better at crucial points in the first set and that’s why I won it, and that’s what I didn’t manage to do in the second and third.”