My thinking was, despite Djokovic’s win-streak, Nadal gave him all he could handle in Indian Wells.  If Nadal’s serve hadn’t given out on him, Djokovic’s streak might already have ended.  To counter Djokovic, Nadal went for big serves and big groundies in the first set and it worked.  Djokovic struggled to keep up.

But, by the second set in Indian Wells, Djokovic managed to start making an impression in Nadal’s service game while Nadal began missing first serve and first serve.

I figured Nadal would fix up his service game by Miami with Uncle Toni’s help, and that would be enough to make the difference and deliver him the win.  Plus, Miami is both very warm and humid.  The conditions would be heavy.  The heat might get to Djokovic as it has so many times before.  Surely, these conditions would favor Nadal.

Whatever Djokovic has done to deal with his health/fitness issues, he seems to have left his problems behind him.  The match lasted over 3 hours and it was Nadal that seemed to catch his breath at the end of the third set, not Djokovic.  Djokovic decided to sport a one-day beard in this match, showing the grungy look, but that was the only thing grungy about him today.  His game, once he got past the first set jitters, was spot on.

The difference between sets 2 and 3 for Djokovic was more about Djokovic doing a better job holding his own serve than Djokovic hurting Rafa on his serve.  He elevated the percentage of points one from about 60% to about 75%, on both first and second serves.  Nadal was pretty steady with 70% of points won on first serve, but in the first two sets, he was barely winning 40% of second serves.  That number went up in the third set which is one reason there were no breaks.

Although Djokovic got broken twice in the first set, one thing that had to make him happy was his looks at break opportunities.  He finally got one break and credited that with relaxing him.  There are times when Nadal faces a boatload of break points but never gives up a break.  This happened to him in Wimbledon 2008, a match he ultimately won.

Much like Indian Wells, Djokovic was frustrated in the opening set.  However, this time Nadal was playing a bit safer than in Indian Wells, not trying as much to dominate off the ground, tempering the kind of aggressive hitting he used in Indian Wells.  Mind you, Nadal still went for big shots, but he also played more patient.  Djokovic rewarded him with errors.

Initially, Nadal had been directing both forehands and backhands to Djokovic’s backhand.  For a while, Djokovic went up the line to Nadal’s backhand, but eventually went for the big shot crosscourt.  Once that happened, Nadal began mixing shots and going to the Djokovic forehand at least as much rather than solely picking on the backhand.  Whether that change in tactic was a good idea or not is not so clear.

Djokovic also had good luck with the drop shot either volleying the shot away or lobbing it over Nadal’s head.

Both played very well, but once Djokovic was comfortable in the second set, I felt he had the slight edge throughout.  Credit Nadal with making this really hard to tell until the tiebreak where it could have gone either way.  Djokovic has lost such tiebreaks before and historically, he’s done poorly against Nadal in tiebreaks losing 5 of 6 until that tiebreak.

Djokovic was able to do what few people do which is make Nadal run a lot.  Normally, Nadal causes his opponents to run around barely getting shots back.  Djokovic’s two-hander is that much more of a weapon than, say, the Federer backhand.   Even his forehand seems to have the kind of precision that Federer’s lack.  The combination of these two gives Djokovic an edge no other player on the planet has when playing Rafa.

Now that we’re wrapping up the early spring hard court season and heading to Europe for clay, let’s take a look at the rest of the field and see how they are faring.

Soderling is struggling a bit these days.  He lost to Kohlschreiber then del Potro. Soderling has had his best Slam results on clay.  He generally doesn’t do all that well leading up to the French and he often has mini-slumps in the year.  Can he play well on clay this year?  Last year, he made the finals of Barcelona losing to Verdasco.

Murray is still seeking answers.  Since he parted ways with Alex Corretja, Murray used the opportunity of a coaching search to pull an April Fool’s joke.  He said he would hire 25 year old British doubles specialist, Ross Hutchins, as his coach.  He later tweeted on April 1 that he wanted another “yes man” on his team.  News reporters didn’t quite catch the joke and reported it as news until they retracted it, victims of a Scottish prank.  While this shows Murray still full of good cheer, it still doesn’t address his confidence issues.  And with clay being his weakest surface, one wonders how Murray will fare this year.  He’ll probably focus on Wimbledon once again.  Whatever his failings, he seems to understand how to play on grass.

Murray is currently wrestling with the recent changes he made.  Last year, he added more power to his game.  It lead to wins at Toronto and Shanghai over Nadal and Federer.  He made it to the semis of the year-end championship and the Australian Open.  But with a second-straight loss in the Melbourne final, Murray’s confidence has spiralled downward as he lost to Donald Young and Bogomolov, both players with ranks in the triple digits.  Last year, he did gain some confidence on clay, but it helped that he had Corretja in his camp and he arranged to hit lots of balls.  Though he lost twice to Ferrer, they were good losses, and he made the Wimbledon semis losing to Rafa.

del Potro is still working his way back to the top ten.  It looks like he’ll reach there soon enough.  But it’s hard to say when he’ll be able to contend for major titles again.  His comeback has been nothing short of remarkable.

Like Andy Murray, Roger Federer is still looking for answers.  He’s improved his game, but it’s still not to the level of Djokovic and Nadal.

Roddick seems to be declining.  It’s even difficult for him to stay completely healthy for an entire year.  He’ll be hoping to be in the top 10 one more year, but this year may pose his greatest challenge to stay there.

Milos Raonic, who had a great four weeks or so seems to have slipped back.  It’s hard to tell if he’s going to be a top 20 regular.  Certainly, at his best, he seems capable of it.  But with losses to Harrison and Devvarman, two players that are more his contemporaries, one wonders if he can bounce back.

Will 2011 bring a new player capable of breaking into the top 10?  The last few players to do this were del Potro, Soderling, and Melzer.  Melzer is likely to fade.  It’s a great end-of-the-career hurrah, but he is closer to 30 (much closer) than 20.

As we move to clay, we can see whether Nadal is still the king of clay.  There’s no particularly compelling reason to think he won’t dominate clay this year as he has past years with the possible exception of trying to deal with Djokovic.  He’s playing very good tennis right now.  The next two months will be quite interesting as Nadal tries to see if he can thwart the Djokovic threat or whether Djokovic is now making a move to get to number 1, a thought that was rather distant back in November 2010 when it looked like Federer-Nadal would be the key rivalry in 2011.