TENNIS 2014 ATP FINALS – Before the start of the 2014 Barclay’s World Tour Finals just after group assignments were made, many pundits held that Group A was the toughest of the two groups as it held 3 major winners, however, as it turned out, Group B is the one that has provided only moderately more interesting affairs.
Before the start of the 2014 Barclay’s World Tour Finals just after group assignments were made, many pundits held that Group A was the toughest of the two groups as it held 3 major winners, (Novak Djokovic [1], Stan Wawrinka [3], Marin Cilic [8]) and all 4 players had made it to a major final at least once in their career, (Tomas Berdych [6] back in 2010). Group B on the other hand only has two major winners (Roger Federer [2] and Andy Murray [5]) and Kei Nishikori [4] who recently made it to the last two at the US Open. Milos Raonic [7] was the lone man in the entire field without an impressive resume. However, as it turned out, Group B is the one that has provided only moderately more interesting affairs. Through two rounds of play in Group A, all matches have been consummate blowouts for the winners. Prior to the Djokovic verses Wawrinka match, the final match of Day 4, the three previous matches in the group featured at least one breadstick set (6-1). Wawrinka ended this streak in favour of having something much more “hefty” like a bagel set as Djokovic simply crushed the Swiss 6-3 6-0 in a mere 65 minutes.
The very early goings of the match captivated fans of the players and the sport alike as Wawrinka broke Djokovic and held serve for a 2-0 lead. The last time these two met was back in Australia when Wawrinka won a tight 5-setter in the quarterfinals and moved on to claim his first major title and in doing so ending Djokovic’s reign in Melbourne. However, as any fan of the sport knows, Wawrinka has not shown any real sign of that type of player outside of his winning run at Monte Carlo in April. He came into this tournament winning one match in his last four tournaments. Yet at the start of the match, one almost believed that Wawrinka was back to that winning major form. However, Djokovic crushed all hopes of that when he fully asserted himself in the match for a 5-2 lead. At one point, Djokovic had won 16/17 straight points on a 5-game streak. It was then fans knew that Wawrinka is back to his old Grade C form self and this matchup was not going to turn into a long awaited 3-setter that the tournament has been crying out for. This was going to be another whitewashing.
Wawrinka showed some true resilience to win the 8th game but Djokovic easily served out the set, 6-3. Djokovic was on another level. In fact, he was several levels above Wawrinka and thus virtually unplayable. In the 2nd set, Djokovic was simply hitting impossible shots from all corners of the court. Everything was working for the Serbian and anything that Wawrinka threw at him, he had the correct response. Nothing from the Swiss fazed him. The numbers alone tell the tale. Djokovic was winning 76% of his 1st serves and 50% on his 2nd serves whilst Wawrinka was at a measly 45% on his 1st serve and a pitiful 26% on his 2nd serve. The Swiss only won 3 points on serve and 7 points total in the entire 2nd set along with a 29 errors and 8 winners for the match. This poor level of play from Wawrinka only allowed for mere target practice for Djokovic as he hit winner after winner, (16 in all for the match) that even Wawrinka had to stop and applaud one of these magnificent shots. So it was no surprise that the match ended 6-3 6-0 in favour of Djokovic.
“[T]his year everybody before the tournament was expecting some big matches because was more surprise during all the year with me winning Grand Slam, Cilic also, Raonic, Nishikori being there”, Wawrinka noted. Those big matches have yet to occur at the O2 Arena in London. Of the 8 singles matches played, they have all been 8 straight-set victories to the higher ranked player with 1 bagel set (6-0), 6 breadsticks (6-1), 1 tiebreaker (7-6) where the loser did not win a single point for a total of 8 hours and 26 minutes of actual play, averaging just about 1 hour and 3 minutes per match. Djokovic, himself expressed surprise at this statistic but said that he hoped that he can keep up his level of play and continue to be on the winning side. He added, “After I lost the first two games, you know, obviously I didn’t start so great. I thought he played very well the first two games. But, again, I wasn’t frustrated. I kept my calm. After that, was a really amazing performance.” He will play Tomas Berdych this Friday to maintain his unblemished record in group play and solidify his claim as the world’s No. 1 player for the rest of the year.
