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Djokovic looks almost perfect in win over Nadal

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Updated Nov 14, 2009 2:39 PM ET
     
 

PARIS

Novak Djokovic produced a performance of near perfection to beat Rafael Nadal 6-2, 6-3 on Saturday in the semifinal of the Paris Masters. The 22-year-old Serb defeated Roger Federer in the final of the Swiss Indoors six days ago and has now added the other great superstar of the era to his growing list of victims. Djokovic will play Frenchman Gael Monfils — rapturously acclaimed by the 15,000-strong crowd here — in Sunday's final after Monfils clawed his way past a defiant Radek Stepanek 6-4, 5-7, 6-4. Djokovic, the winner of the 2008 Australian Open, has always had the potential to beat anyone, but consistency and stamina problems have hampered his progress. Now he seems to be overcoming those shortcomings. The fact that he has played 92 matches this year, more than anyone on the ATP tour, suggests that he can become a constant threat to his rivals in the world's top five. Djokovic — who strangely seems to be a bigger fan favorite here than Nadal, four-time winner of the French Open — was beaming afterwards. "Well, there's not much to say about today's performance except it was perfect," he said. "I was very aggressive. Took early control of the match and it paid off. I was hitting winners all over the court and really trying to keep the momentum going throughout the whole match." Hard to argue with any of that, and Nadal certainly wasn't about to. "He played unbelievable in my opinion," Nadal said. "Nothing to do today. When I play bad, I always say I am playing bad. But today I didn't play bad. But with this level, Novak is very difficult to play, especially on this surface, indoor, fast court. The ball is not getting a lot of topspin so it is difficult to pull Djokovic out of his zone." Lessen Nadal's ability to impart topspin on the ball and the Spaniard's effectiveness is reduced to a considerable degree. All his opponents will tell you that trying to control a ball that he makes rotate at a faster rate than anyone else in the game is what makes Nadal such an incredibly difficult opponent. The Spaniard and the Serb had met 19 times before, and Djokovic had only managed to win five of them, all outdoors. Now, going into the ATP Tour World Finals in London next week, he will feel that he has no one to fear, having lifted a natural self-confidence to a new level. If the first semifinal was unexpectedly one-sided, the second kept the boisterous crowd engaged for 2 hours, 42 minutes as Stepanek kept coming back at Monfils in a duel that the Frenchman should have won much sooner. Monfils served for the match at 5-4 in the second but failed to put away a forehand volley and then a smash on the first point of the game and Stepanek reaped full advantage. Serves were swapped at the beginning of the second as the Czech erred frequently on his suspect forehand volley. But he kept coming at his opponent, serving and volleying behind most first serves as he tried to throw Monfils off his baseline rhythm. The 23-year-old with a father from Guadaloupe and a mother from Martinique is a mass of contradictions on a tennis court. His style is more akin to that of Andy Murray in that he prefers to rally from the backcourt in an attempt to lure opponents into error.
But he is also an amazingly elastic mover, capable of throwing himself all over the place; leaping into the air for smashes, lunging at the end of leg-splitting slides for wide backhands and, if necessary, leaping over courtside flower boxes in pursuit of angled overheads. In between all these exertions, he still has enough energy to conduct the orchestra with great arm-waving encouragement, as he did when he finally reached match point at 5-4 in the third after Stepanek put a volley long. Two points earlier, the valiant Czech had won the point of the match — reaching wide to make a forehand return, racing in to pick up a great Monfils half volley, volleying a return off the next shot and then grabbing a winner with a purely instinctive stabbed volley. The crowd didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but they were in raptures two points later as Monfils won a pulsating duel that put him into the final of a Masters 1000 event for the first time in his career. Richard Evans, who commentated at Wimbledon on BBC Radio for 20 years, has been covering tennis since the 1960's and has reported on more than 150 Grand Slams. He is the author of 15 books, including the official history of the Davis Cup and the unofficial history of the modern game in "Open Tennis." He lives in Florida but is still on the tour 20 weeks in the year.

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