Djokovic's Grass Credentials

I thought I would check them out.

Djokovics career record on grass is 38 wins and 11 losses.

Not many tournaments are played on grass so it is possible to briefly summarize his grass career.

2011. Won Wimbledon beating Nadal in the final. The highest seed he beat on the way to the final was Tsonga (rank 13)

2010. Wimbledon. Lost in semi's to Berdych (rank 13). Queens. Lost r16 to Mallise (rank 74)

2009. Wimbledon. Lost in quarters to Haas (rank 34). Halle. Lost in final to Haas (rank 41)

2008. Wimbledon. Lost in r64 to Safin (rank 75). Queens. Lost in final to Nadal (rank 2). Beat Nalbandian (rank 8) in semi's

2007. Wimbledon. Lost in semi's to Nadal (rank 2). Queens. Lost r16 to Clement (rank 43)

I am surprised that Djokovic has only two wins against top ten players on this surface. Nadal (of course!) and Nalbandian who was ranked 8 in 2008. He has never played Federer or Murray on grass. His H2H with Nadal on grass is 1 win and 2 losses.

Anyone claiming that Djokovic is superior on grass to Nadal must believe in the Djokovic version 2 theory. ie the new Djokovic who emerged in 2011.

Well when it comes to winning matches, Nadal is superior to every player on every surface...

break_in_the_fifth wrote:Well when it comes to winning matches, Nadal is superior to every player on every surface...

I know it can sometimes seem that way but in reality the actual stats paint a rather different picture.:

Nadal's official record on the main surfaces :

On clay : Number 1 of all active players, and Number 1 of all time

On grass : Number 2 of all active players, and Number 7 of all time

On Hard : Number 4 of all active players, Number 13 of all time

On indoor : Number 12 of all active players, Number 46 of all time

Interesting numbers hawkeye
I've never had Djokovic down as Wimby favourite.

Interesting stats we well lags...his indoor record is a statistical insignificance though given he's played about 8 matches I think?

For a "claycourter" he's not done bad to be #7 all time on grass...and given the no. of HCs these days #13 all time isnt bad either.

break_in_the_fifth wrote:Well when it comes to winning matches, Nadal is superior to every player on every surface...

Ill take Novak today against Nadal on any hardcourt you would like and I would favor Novak. And since 65 percent of tournaments are on hardcourt I think your statement is wrong and overselling the last guy who won a grandslam.

As to the OP's original post, there is no Novak 2011 theory the guy won 3 slams and 5 masters a better year than Nadal has ever had, there is no theory at all. I am going to love it if Novak wins wimbeldon and all the Nadal fans will talk about how Novak got lucky with fast conditions. Just like he got lucky at the FO with too slow a conditions. It seems that Nadal is like gollidlocks he doesn't like it too fast or too slow, lol!.

Novak Djokovic is a different player in the last 18 months and there is no theory Hawkeye there is an extenisve track record of victory which we witnessed part of with his first ever RG final. He has hardly fallen off the map. I think Novak a couple of years ago had his serve in total dissarray so that probably explains some of the losses. He may win wimby or he may not, either way I will tell you that as Djoko fan I like his chances against anyone if he is playing his game.

Djokovic is an exception to this 'Credentials' on Grass. The fact he has won a Slam on a surface to which he hasn't won a title previously. If anything I think his stats against the other 2 need to be measured. If he is drawn against Murray, that for me will hold a lot of interest.

Me too Legend, as a Novak fan I will admit it I don't like the prospect of playing murray at wimbeldon. I think Novak is tough enough and good enough to win that match but it would be a very a difficult test nonethless. Murray in many ways provides some interesting problems for Novak because there strengths match up so well. Two best returners, and two best backhands in the game and great movers. It is almost like mirror images except in some subtle areas.

I think Murray would be a much stiffer test for Novak because of the variety. It will be of comfort to Novak though that Nadal has handled him very ruthlessly on grass in the past.

lydian - admittedly there's far fewer indoor tournies these days, but not sure where you got as few as eight matches for Rafa on indoor courts ....??
Shome mishtake shurely ...?

His career W/L match figures are in fact recorded as 52-29

Yes, I wonder about that you would think if there is a place murray would like to play Nadal it would be on grass. Many murray fans contend that he is an excellent fast court player but that seems to be a bit of an odd thing then that he can't get into Nadal more on grass. Well I will say this honestly I can only see one of 4 players beating Novak at RG one of them would be murray. The other 3 are RAonic, Nadal, or Fed. So I'd like to avoid any of those matchups as a Djoko fan. Andy has a lot of variety legend but I think when he stands too far back that negates his variety and forces him to play just one way.

There's no doubt Nadal has the superior record on grass compared to Djokovic however it misses a vital point: how have the two fared recently? Undoubtedly Djokovic has had the upper hand and is the player to beat.

Djokovic has shown he can beat Nadal on grass @ Wimbledon, apart from Federer (who beat him back in 2007), who else can in recent history can claim that?

Precisely, Lucius, I mean how many grandslams does he have to win before they stop talking about ludicrous things like his credentials and his pedigree. Jeez people I mean the guy won the tournament last year what kind of silly talk is his grass court credentials. I mean if he isn't secretariat he is at least Affirmed or Sea biscuit the guy has got the chops to win the race. This post is something you could of recycled from one year ago, but at least one year ago he wasn't the defending champ. Those threads pre-wimby about Djoko were wrong last year and they are even more wrong now.

lags72 wrote:lydian - admittedly there's far fewer indoor tournies these days, but not sure where you got as few as eight matches for Rafa on indoor courts ....??
Shome mishtake shurely ...?

On here lags... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Nadal_career_statistics
I was thinking of the carpet record - its a 2-6 W:L...but guess he must have played other indoor events on other surfaces of course. You were right lags