Rafael Nadal vs Novak Djokovic preview: Drop shot could be key to outcome of French Open final

[ASFN Admin]

The drop-shot dragon. That is what they used to call Albert Portas, a top-20 player around the turn of the 21st Century, who was constantly pulling his opponent forward with cute little touch shots. At this year’s French Open, the title could be transferred to Novak Djokovic. Unusually, Djokovic will start as the underdog – or underdragon? – in Sunday’s final. Such is his hegemony over world tennis, this only happens when he faces Rafael Nadal on Court Philippe Chatrier – the stadium he described on Friday night as “Rafa’s house”. Which is where his not-so-secret weapon comes in. Djokovic has been honing his drop-shot since he arrived on the cold, soggy clay a little over a fortnight ago. It is a high-risk ploy, and when he kept bringing it out at the start of the event – against lower-ranked players who struggled to handle his bread-and-butter strokes, let alone these delicacies – there was a sense that he might be getting carried away. But on Friday night, when Djokovic faced a pumped-up opponent in fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas, all that prep came in handy. Time and again, Tsitsipas found himself dragged in towards the net, a fish thrashing on the end of a line. He barely ever made it in time. And Djokovic’s 17 successful droppers meant that he finished this thrilling five-setter with 172 points overall, as against Tsitsipas’s 149. For Nadal – who loves to hang yards behind the baseline and wind up his lassoo forehand – the Djokovic drop-shot presents an awkward conundrum. Does he stand further forward, where he could be caught out by his opponent’s scudding groundstrokes? Or pull on the diving boots, go deep in the court, and hope that his phenomenal acceleration will help him retrieve more droppers than Tsitsipas did?

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