Novak Djokovic vs. Roger Federer takes place tonight at the 2015 ATP World Tour Finals in London.
The match is scheduled to start at 20:00 GMT.
Preview:
After resounding wins on the opening day of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, Djokovic and Federer face off in a Tuesday night clash that will surely decide who will top Group Stan Smith.
Djokovic and Federer must surely be the two favourites to claim the title at the 2015 World Tour Finals – after all, Federer has a record six season-ending championship crowns to his name, the most recent one coming in 2011, while Djokovic shows no sign of flagging at the end of his supremely successful season and such is the degree of his dominance that it’s almost impossible to imagine he won’t become the first man in history to win four straight World Tour Finals titles.
Djokovic, in fact, is the proud owner of three exceptional winning streaks that he will carry into his match against Federer. His 6-1, 6-1 victory over Kei Nishikori in the opening match of the 2015 World Tour Finals on Sunday was not just a 65-minute display of impenetrable excellence, but was his 15th win in a row at the World Tour Finals and his 38th consecutive win indoors, with his last defeat coming in 2012. It was also the 23rd match Djokovic has won in a row (a streak that stretches back to American hard courts as well as encompassing the Shanghai and ATP World Tour Finals titles). Funnily enough, it was Federer who was the last man to beat Djokovic in the Cincinnati Masters final – a fact which underlines the extent to which this season has seen Djokovic and Federer more often than not facing off for the biggest titles, not least in the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open.
‘I think I was at my best,’ Djokovic said of his crushing defeat of Nishikori, and it’s a statement that’s extremely hard to argue with even as we marvel at how Djokovic is continuously pushing the boundaries of his best. It was not a great performance from the eighth seed, but he did little wrong apart from serving poorly; it’s just that that poor serving hamstrung him completely and he could make no impression on Djokovic’s serve, with the world no. 1 winning 92% of points behind his first delivery and finishing the match without facing a break point.
Federer’s 6-4, 6-2 victory over Tomas Berdych was a decidedly more uneven affair, with Federer broken in his opening service game (thanks largely to a pair of double faults) and unable to shake Berdych for much of the first set. The Czech basically folded after a disastrous service game saw him lose the first set and Federer cruised through the second.
The 17-time Grand Slam champion said it was a good surface for him, but it’s hard to see precisely how when it comes to facing Djokovic, against whom Federer has had his greatest successes, particularly in recent years, on faster courts when he can play incisive, aggressive tennis – something that, as Federer has diagnosed himself, the surface at the O2 Arena will not favour.
‘Seems like whoever takes charge of the baseline, and if you cannot serve your way out of trouble often enough, which is hard to do here because of the pace of the court, the guy from the baseline wins, the better one,’ Federer said.
Is Djokovic ‘better’ from the baseline? He’s certainly unbelievably solid, consistent and versatile, a formula which has seen him win five of seven matches against Federer this season (although their overall head-to-head is poised at 21-21). Federer won in Dubai in February and in Cincinnati in August – significantly, both matches were best of three – while Djokovic took both their best-of-five meetings, in the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open, in four sets, as well as their clashes in Indian Wells and Rome.
This match is, of course, the final we never got to see at last year’s World Tour Finals, when Djokovic and Federer were supposed to face off for the title at the O2 only for Federer to pull out because of a back injury. They have met three times before at the season-ending championships, with Federer winning in straight sets in 2010 and Djokovic winning in 2012 and 2013.
