In the latest episode of the Eye of the coach, Patrick Mouratoglou is saying that Novak Djokovic has once again shown his superiority in a Grand Slam final.
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00:00 In that Grand Slam final, he came to conquer and he did.
00:03 In this 2023 US Open final between Novak Djokovic
00:09 and Daniel Medvedev, Novak added two elements
00:13 that made the decision.
00:14 The first thing was his mindset.
00:16 In finals of Grand Slams, there are two different Novaks.
00:19 There is the Novak that comes to conquer
00:21 and when he's like that and he plays his best tennis,
00:24 he's the best player in the world.
00:25 And there is the Djokovic, comes to the final
00:27 to avoid losing, kind of.
00:29 And this one is beatable, is extremely difficult to beat,
00:32 but he is beatable.
00:33 In that Grand Slam final, he came to conquer and he did.
00:37 The second element that was key, I think,
00:39 was the tactical element.
00:40 When he's playing Daniel,
00:42 he knows it's gonna be a tough match
00:43 because they have the same type of game
00:45 and Novak doesn't have firepower like other players.
00:48 He's a player who has a lot of other qualities,
00:50 but this one he doesn't have.
00:51 And to score a point, a winner against Daniel
00:54 is extremely difficult.
00:55 The more the rally goes,
00:57 the more it goes in the favor of Daniel.
00:59 So he has to find a way to shorten the points
01:02 and he has to find a way when he rallies
01:03 not to put himself in trouble.
01:05 And I think in that final, it was very tactical.
01:07 He did two things that he didn't do so much
01:09 in the previous matches against Daniel.
01:11 First of all, he played serve and volley much, much more.
01:14 He used to never do it before
01:16 and it's something that he added to his game lately.
01:18 But on most of the key moments on his serve,
01:20 he served and volley.
01:21 He took advantage of the fact that Daniel is so far back
01:24 and he scored most of the points.
01:27 He went to the net much more, which is key also,
01:30 because as I said, Daniel is probably one of the best
01:32 to move around the court, same as Novak.
01:34 So it's so difficult to hit a winner against him.
01:36 He came to finish the point at the net.
01:38 The net play, that was something
01:40 that was definitely not part of his game.
01:42 He was going very randomly to the net.
01:44 Now in a final like this, he went much more than usual
01:47 and serve and volley was key.
01:48 And the second element was to use the center of the court
01:50 also, because if you move only right and left Daniel,
01:54 he barely misses and the further on the side he is,
01:56 the more he finds angle to counter attack you.
01:59 And in that final, he was very smart to play right,
02:01 left, center, right, left, center a lot.
02:03 And when he came back to the center,
02:05 he either had a shot to go for the winner or Daniel missed.
02:09 So he added those two components to his game for that final.
02:12 And I think this played a big role.
02:14 On top of the fact that he played his best tennis
02:16 and that mentally he looked very confident.
02:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]