Secretly, Wimbledon must have been happy with this match. Due to Federer’s five-setter, Djokovic’s matches got a late start. This meant Wimbledon got a chance to roll the roof over the five setter that Novak Djokovic found himself in, and on the longest day of the year, have the longest day at Wimbledon, courtesy of the roof.
Unlike the Australian Open or the US Open where matches have been pushed into the wee hours of the morning (partly a product of separate daytime and evening matches), Wimbledon imposes a curfew. This means matches must conclude by 11 PM or be pushed into the next day.
Rochus is one of the shortest players on tour. At 5’6″, he’s not blessed with a big serve, but the 29 year old veteran has managed to play well throughout his career and had Djokovic on the ropes. Rochus took sets 1 and 3 and Djokovic took set 2. In the fourth set, Djokovic finally had a good set of games and broke to take it 6-4. However, Rochus turned it around in the fifth set, and took a 2-0 break.
At that moment, Djokovic must have sensed that he was on the clock. Djokovic immediately broke back and then won 2, 3, 4, 5, and yes finally 6 games in a row to take the final set 6-2 at just a hair before the 11 PM curfew (one wonders if the prim and proper British would really have called the match with a game left to go). One key point had Djokovic attacking the net, bending down, and volleying a deft angle drop volley to secure an early fifth set break.
Djokovic has a losing record against Rochus, 3-1 (now 3-2). However, 2 of the matches date from 2005, long before Djokovic was a pretty good player (which started in 2007). At that point, he was just an up-and-coming talent. The third loss was in Miami, earlier this year, when his game was faltering under the stress of modifications to his game. At least, on grass, Djokovic upped his ace count to 17, though, much like Maria Sharapova, Novak’s double fault count was pretty high at 12.
Djokovic had nearly 3 times the winners of Rochus (96 to 33) which includes service winners, but almost 3 times the errors (60 to 24).
Djokovic now plays Taylor Dent.
Dent, in his post-match interview, pointed out that true serve and volley is too difficult (mostly). He says he models his modified serve and volley after Mark Phillippousis, who would serve big, wait for a weak return, take a big swipe, and head to net. Djokovic might prefer a more aggressive player to play against (or he might not). He certainly feels Roger’s (and Nikolay’s) pain but also joy in having not exited in the first round in quite sometime.
