Working the crowd

From the BBC report :-
Asked about his celebration after saving the first match point, Djokovic said: "I needed to get some energy from the crowd. It was normal to expect they were a little bit more on the side of Roger.....But I thought at that certain moment I had to get some of the crowd energy behind me. And it worked."

When I saw him do that, my first thought was that he was doing it to p1ss Federer off. At least, I like to think that's why he did it, because it would have been a superb piece of gamesmanship. Connors would have been proud of that one.

The crowd was being quite cold and generally negative towards Djokovic for reasons unknown.. do they even know that Roger is from Switzerland; and not the US? It's a genuine question as they don't seem very intelligent at all.

If you are running long distance and are all out of energy coming to the latter part of the run, having a crowd of people cheering you on along the final stretch, does work. From somewhere you find "hidden energy", you get a "lift", and this helps you to get home. You see this with Triple Jumpers in competition as they try to get the crowd to cheer them on.

Becker won a match against Agassi like that at Wimbledon. He was completely outplayed and when he scored a game he did exactly what Djoko did, lift his arm and get the crowd on his side.

Agassi was furious after the match.

In Djoko's case, I don;t think that's gamesmanship as much...much certainly can have an inflence.

The crowd paid the price for that too cause I think they wanted the other man to win though.

Tenez wrote:Becker won a match against Agassi like that at Wimbledon. He was completely outplayed and when he scored a game he did exactly what Djoko did, lift his arm and get the crowd on his side.

Agassi was furious after the match. ...

I suppose in tennis the relative cheering does affect the players differently (rather than affecting them both equally in the same way). Being cheered for winning an exhausting point must give an "additional" lift to the person winning the point and perhaps an "additional" depression to the loser of the point.

I think the crowd can sometimes influence games if the player responding to the energy allows it disrupt their game.

I think to the Haase Murray match by where an upset would've been more of a talking point than a Murray victory, yet when he was 2 sets down and the crowd got behind Murray and when Murray was 4-0 in the 5th the crowd got behind Haase.

The crowd want a 5 setter as it is more bang for their buck, but I am sure the players don't want to be playing 5 setters every time.

The crowd were obviously cheering Federer on on the match points and i think Djokovic fed off that energy. He had fans in the crowd to you know so his attempt to work them was good. I just think it's bravery from Djokovic. Certainly one of the greatest shots ever player in tennis and it takes extreme talent, skill and confidence to excecute that. Serenal played a similar shot against Bartoli at Wimbledon this year as well on saving a match point.

Nore Staat wrote:

Tenez wrote:Becker won a match against Agassi like that at Wimbledon. He was completely outplayed and when he scored a game he did exactly what Djoko did, lift his arm and get the crowd on his side.

Agassi was furious after the match. ...

I suppose in tennis the relative cheering does affect the players differently (rather than affecting them both equally in the same way). Being cheered for winning an exhausting point must give an "additional" lift to the person winning the point and perhaps an "additional" depression to the loser of the point.

Well it's no coincidence that 5 of the 8 slams Connors won were in the US. No coincidence that Borg has not lost v Connors outside the US since he reached 20.

Crowd is very important at tennis but yesterday it was behind Fed most of the time so can't complain there.

Fed is always going to have crowd support to the day he leaves the tour unless he does something really crazy. He deserves it he earned it but it is great that Novak kept his poise and basically won this road match.

I think crowd support will be mostly with Rafa tomorrow. Ashe spectators are sentimental in their support, when a US player is not in the match.

Leff, I agree but at this point Novak is too experienced to be thrown off by the crowd. All that experience in road Davis cup matches dwarfes the type of crowd animosity he may experience. Plus I think his success is winning him more and more of a following even in the fickle sport's market.

I think he crowd support will be even for both as Djokovic has been in more US open finals than Nadal so it might balance out with being defending champion

Nadal has more name recognition and fan support at this point, but it will be much more even than what he gets when plays fed. Fed has the additional benefit of being in the twilight of his career which make the fans more protective of a legendary player on the way out.

I guess so as Nadal is already a legend of the sport but Djokovic, having made two previous finals, is probably known almost as well to the casual fan over there in a way he might not have been to the casual fan over here until this years Wimbledon final.