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Novak Djokovic stood in the Miami Open final and once again failed to win the trophy. It’s become a bit of a theme for Djokovic to somehow make the final of an event but then stumble at the final step. It’s not so much because he doesn’t play well enough. Making the final proves that he is playing well enough to contest for the trophy, but the players he’s facing simply find a way to beat him more often than before.
So what does that tell us? It tells us that the other players are getting better but also that Djokovic is slowing down a little bit. So it begs the question whether he will truly win any more trophies. It’s not a hard question to answer because the answer is simple. He will win trophies again. In fact, he will win clay trophies again, and we’re going to tell you why we believe that.
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Djokovic on clay
The nature of clay tennis contributes to what makes Djokovic so difficult to beat. Think about what you know about clay tennis. It’s not a particularly snappy style of tennis. It’s very slow. The rallies drag on, and it’s just not as easy to win a point. That helps a player like Novak Djokovic, who can patiently wait and construct points the way he likes to do it.
Somebody like Jakub Mensik, who bested Novak Djokovic largely thanks to his serve in Miami, may not win a clay match against the Serbian because it’s impossible to win a clay match simply on your serve. It gets easier in Madrid with the high altitude, but generally, it doesn’t happen.
Somebody like Carlos Alcaraz can even struggle against Novak on clay, which tells you enough about how difficult it is to beat him on such a tennis court.
The Olympic Final
A more poignant reason as to why Djokovic is likely to win a trophy on clay is because of the Olympic final in Paris, which was played less than a year ago. Novak Djokovic faced Carlos Alcaraz in that final and outplayed him. That final might have been over a year ago, but Novak is relatively a similar player. Sure, he hasn’t done much since then, failing to win a trophy or really coming close to a breakthrough at a Grand Slam, but he’s still a player that is capable enough. The problem for Djokovic on clay will be his body. As the Roland Garros last year showed, he might have a problem if he ends up playing too many long matches on clay.
He got injured last year, and that is what prevented him from enjoying a deep run the way he did in the past. If his body holds up, there is nothing that prevents him from actually playing well on clay and winning a trophy.
The level is there, and very few players are actually capable of giving him major problems on the surface, as even some of the best haven’t been able to do that. The Olympics showed that, though the best-of-three format certainly helped him at that event.
Motivation
The final thing that can’t be forgotten is motivation. Novak Djokovic seems to still have an abundance of motivation to prove himself. It would be foolish to think that the way the past tennis season has gone didn’t leave a major mark on Novak Djokovic. Not being able to win much in terms of trophies certainly left a mark on him, and he wants to rectify this this year. The fact that he already played so many events proves that he is going to play a little bit more this year.
He wants to win, and he’s going to try everything to get that done. There isn’t a shortage of motivation, which is the most important thing. He still wants to break that record that Jimmy Connors is holding, and to do that, he will need to win a couple of more trophies. The bigger issue for him—in fact, likely the biggest issue for him—will be his body and how it holds up. We’ve seen recently that it has started to falter a little bit, and if he can’t control that to the level he wants to, that is likely going to be the one thing that prevents him from clinching more titles.
Everything else looks pretty decent, and that’s why we think he’s going to win at least one clay title this year, if not several.
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