Eye of the coach #81 : "In that Grand Slam final, Djokovic came to conquer and he did"

Tennis Majors

In the latest episode of the Eye of the coach, Patrick Mouratoglou is saying that Novak Djokovic has once again shown his superiority in a Grand Slam final.

Transcript

00:00 In that Grand Slam final, he came to conquer and he did.

00:03 In this 2023 US Open final between Novak Djokovic

00:09 and Daniel Medvedev, Novak added two elements

00:13 that made the decision.

00:14 The first thing was his mindset.

00:16 In finals of Grand Slams, there are two different Novaks.

00:19 There is the Novak that comes to conquer

00:21 and when he's like that and he plays his best tennis,

00:24 he's the best player in the world.

00:25 And there is the Djokovic, comes to the final

00:27 to avoid losing, kind of.

00:29 And this one is beatable, is extremely difficult to beat,

00:32 but he is beatable.

00:33 In that Grand Slam final, he came to conquer and he did.

00:37 The second element that was key, I think,

00:39 was the tactical element.

00:40 When he's playing Daniel,

00:42 he knows it's gonna be a tough match

00:43 because they have the same type of game

00:45 and Novak doesn't have firepower like other players.

00:48 He's a player who has a lot of other qualities,

00:50 but this one he doesn't have.

00:51 And to score a point, a winner against Daniel

00:54 is extremely difficult.

00:55 The more the rally goes,

00:57 the more it goes in the favor of Daniel.

00:59 So he has to find a way to shorten the points

01:02 and he has to find a way when he rallies

01:03 not to put himself in trouble.

01:05 And I think in that final, it was very tactical.

01:07 He did two things that he didn't do so much

01:09 in the previous matches against Daniel.

01:11 First of all, he played serve and volley much, much more.

01:14 He used to never do it before

01:16 and it's something that he added to his game lately.

01:18 But on most of the key moments on his serve,

01:20 he served and volley.

01:21 He took advantage of the fact that Daniel is so far back

01:24 and he scored most of the points.

01:27 He went to the net much more, which is key also,

01:30 because as I said, Daniel is probably one of the best

01:32 to move around the court, same as Novak.

01:34 So it's so difficult to hit a winner against him.

01:36 He came to finish the point at the net.

01:38 The net play, that was something

01:40 that was definitely not part of his game.

01:42 He was going very randomly to the net.

01:44 Now in a final like this, he went much more than usual

01:47 and serve and volley was key.

01:48 And the second element was to use the center of the court

01:50 also, because if you move only right and left Daniel,

01:54 he barely misses and the further on the side he is,

01:56 the more he finds angle to counter attack you.

01:59 And in that final, he was very smart to play right,

02:01 left, center, right, left, center a lot.

02:03 And when he came back to the center,

02:05 he either had a shot to go for the winner or Daniel missed.

02:09 So he added those two components to his game for that final.

02:12 And I think this played a big role.

02:14 On top of the fact that he played his best tennis

02:16 and that mentally he looked very confident.

02:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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