PARIS — Novak Djokovic followed Rafael Nadal on to Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros on Monday, the pair seemingly inextricably linked here in their quest for Grand Slam glory. Where one goes, the other follows.
With 32 Grand Slam titles between them, the pair are heavily tipped to meet in the final here a week from Sunday and, on the evidence of their opening matches Monday, the world’s top two players have every little detail in hand.
First-round matches of a Slam can be troublesome places, even for the biggest names, but both men were business-like to the extreme. Nadal, the 11-time French Open champion, demolished German qualifier Yannick Hanfmann, 6-2, 6-1, 6-3, while world No. 1 Djokovic, chasing his fourth straight Slam title, ripped easily beat No. 44 Hubert Hurkacz, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.
You can’t win a Grand Slam title in the first week, but you can certainly lose it, as Roger Federer, and others before him, like to say. Conserving energy in Week 1 ahead of the bigger, bruising encounters to come at the back-end of the tournament is crucial.
“It’s really important,” Pat Cash, the former Wimbledon champion, told ESPN.com. “Look at Roger, that’s one of the reasons he’s still playing [at the top]. He just wipes through the field.”
While Boris Becker and Pete Sampras once conserved energy in matches by only flat-out trying to break when they won the opening point of their opponent’s service game, Nadal and Djokovic are different animals.
“Roger cruises a little, Pete Sampras cruised,” said Paul McNamee, Cash’s former doubles partner and more recently the coach of Hsieh-su-Wei. “[Djokovic and Nadal] are not those type of guys. They don’t cruise. Rafa’s never cruised a match [in his life].”
Djokovic’s victory in Madrid earlier this month and Nadal’s subsequent win in Rome, where he beat the Serb in the final, has left both high on confidence. The psychological importance of Nadal’s win over Djokovic cannot be overstated; it was his first title of 2019 after a slow start to the clay-court season following injury.
On Monday, he got the job done in style.
“I did a lot of things well, not many mistakes, being very solid all the time,” he said. “Of course, it is the beginning, and the first round is more about talking about what I have to do better. What I did very well today is just a general feeling, and the general feeling [has] been positive [Monday]. Happy to be through to the second round, and that’s the main thing.”
1:10
Novak Djokovic explains why he might be receiving a bill from the Roland Garros gym for damages that have gone viral on social media.
Twenty minutes or so later, Djokovic, who won his only title in Paris in 2016, hit the ground running with a performance full of authority against a dangerous opponent in Hurkacz, whose big-hitting game has catapulted him from No. 86 at the end of 2018 to his current mark of 44. Knowing he might have a battle on his hands, Djokovic was almost flawless, laying down a marker to Nadal and the rest with a brilliant display.
Should the pair meet in the final a week Sunday, as the seedings and expectations would suggest, it would be their 55th clash. Djokovic edges their head-to-head battles 28-26, but Nadal leads 17-7 on clay.
Both players will inevitably keep an eye on what each other does along the way, but they are surely too experienced to get ahead of themselves, especially with trouble in their paths, especially Federer, Dominic Thiem, the Austrian who reached last year’s final, and Stefanos Tsitsipas, who beat Nadal in Madrid.
“They’re not that stupid to think they’re going to walk through to the final,” Cash said, pointing to the carrot on offer for each. “At this stage in his career, Nadal wouldn’t be wary of everybody — once he gets going, he’s always going to be the favorite. But if they don’t prepare and don’t do their homework, don’t do their stats and everything else, they’ll come undone. They’re not going to take [chances].”
Thiem, perhaps the man most likely to prevent a Djokovic-Nadal final, had to battle to get through to the second round, needing four sets to beat American Tommy Paul, the 2015 junior champion at Roland Garros.
Djokovic and Nadal, you can bet, will have noticed that, too.