One of the most one sided grand slam finals!

Winning a grand slam seven times is no joke. Beating Rafa in straight sets in a grand slam final is not an easy job but Novak Djokovic actually did make a mockery of one of the bigger nights in Australia's sports calender. After a couple of one sided semi final victories, Novak Djokovic vs Rafael Nadal was supposed to be an epic finale and a treat for the spectators. Even when the players were in the lobby, we could feel the sense of theater and drama surrounded around this final between two of the greatest players to have ever graced the game. Djokovic was going for a record seventh title at the Rod Laver Arena while Rafa was about to become the first male player in the history to win every grand slam multiple times.
    Djokovic won the toss and chose to serve and he set the tone from the first game itself. First game of the match was done and dusted within a minute and he straightaway broke Nadal to go 2-0 up. Novak eventually won the set 6-3, quite easily. At 2-2 in the second set, it looked as if Nadal had started to settle in and everybody felt that they were in the middle of the best spell of tennis till then. But Novak broke Nadal without much of a difficulty and he broke Nadal again in the 2nd set to win it 6-2. The match was almost over in people's minds as Rafa looked nowhere near his best and he looked miles away from matching Djokovic. 3rd set was just a formality as Novak was able to break Nadal twice to take the set 6-3. If anyone had told me before the match that Djokovic would win it in straight sets, I would have definitely laughed it off and told him to have a nap and come back. Nobody saw that coming becsuse if Rafa getting beaten in straight sets wasn't surprising, his service getting broken 5 times in 3 sets surely was. Novak Djokovic put on an exhibition of a very high class Tennis and it looked as if Nadal was almost caught in awe of Djokovic's strokeplay. We know Djokovic probably has the best backhand in our game and Nadal always had to worry about that. Djokovic was nailing everything accurately and at pace! There was a stat which said that the average speed of Djokovic's forehand throughout this year's Australian Open was 123 kph. In the final, he was firing them at 142! That extra bit of pace allowed him to catch Rafa on the backfoot. But it was his backhand that was making Nadal run everwhere. The way Djokovic was sending those backhands across to the left baseline was quite astonishing and Nadal was never in position to return them because he was more worried about the down the line backhand. And don't forget, it was his second best shot! Djokovic doesn't like to serve and volley much but when he did come to the net, he was good enough to outsmart Rafa. We know Rafa's forehand is as good and as strong as anybody but because he was worried about Djokovic's imcredible reach, he was trying to be so accurate that in the process,he shot them horribly wide many times. The longer the match went on, the wider the gulf between the two players looked. As fascinating as Novak's play was, the numbers were pretty telling as well. 34 winners to Nadal's 21, just 9 unforced errors to Rafa's 28, those are pretty definitive statistics!
    What we saw yesterday was a near perfect game of tennis from one player and a nightmare for another. But I personally felt that even if Nadal was able to bring his 'A' game, he still wouldn't have been able to beat Novak in a mood he was in. Now he sits on 15 grand slam titles, just 2 away from Rafa and 5 away from the great Roger Federer. I hate to say this, but if Djokovic goes on for another 2 years without any hickups due to injury, we might be looking at the most decorated tennis player in the history.