The reasons for Djokovic’s dominance are both physical and psychological. The final always takes place at night. These night games, to which the birds come, are played together with legions of Serbs who shout the chant “Olé, olé, olé, olé” when their favorite son needs him most, often in cooler temperatures than in warm weather, dry days of the Australian summer. Heat has always melted Djokovic. A cool evening like the one he met Medvedev is his favorite gaming partner.
In addition, the players say that climate change is completely changing the conditions of the course. Balls no longer bounce off the ground, holding so many of Djokovic’s hard, flat ground strokes under his opponent’s knees and outside their striking zones. What looks like a simple backhand is anything but, especially if the player who hit the original shot never lost the ultimate match here and the opponent’s counterattack too often lands far, long or in the middle of the net.
Medvedev made 67 mistakes, 30 of them informal, although against Djokovic the difference between a forced and an unconstrained error is negligible. Djokovic only served three aces, but he won 73 percent of the points on his first serve and 58 percent on his second serve, numbers that usually result in a dominant night.
Djokovic won seven out of 11 breakpoints and 16 out of 18 points when he hit the net. He outsmarted a player who is believed to be perhaps the smartest and most creative in the game by letting Medvedev guess and setting the kinds of traps Medvedev is known to plot for his opponents by hitting three shots to put the winner on fourth .
They come almost every year now, this new group of challengers who so desperately want to start their time in the sun, to win the championships that everyone in the game values most and to beat the three players who are considered the best apply that were ever played in the greatest moments. Medvedev, Dominikus Thiem, others will certainly follow. And every year they fall short, which makes the task seem all the more impossible.
Djokovic, Federer and Nadal – the so-called Big Three of men’s tennis – have simply refused to give way to the next generation of players who have not managed to overthrow them on the biggest stages for years. None of them have ever lost a final to a player who is currently under 30.
