Djokovic once again made a would-be rival look ordinary in a 65-minute 6-1 6-1 thrashing of Kei Nishikori, who later admitted he was “very ashamed” of the scoreline. With the small matter of one of its sponsors’ cheques, worth a cool £1.5m, thrown in.
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“I didn’t allow him to dictate the play”, the victor said about an opponent who won only 32 of the 92 points contested.
“Undoubtedly it has been the best season and the best year of my life”, he said. “That’s how it felt”.
“I think that’s the case of playing with Kei”. “Why I’m able to continue on and kind of maintain this consistency or this success is because I’m trying to not think too much in advance because whatever happened in the past is behind me and whatever is in the future, I don’t know what’s going to happen”.
It wasn’t the only message Djokovic sent out yesterday.
Prior to the pair’s seventh meeting, Djokovic, Nishikori and the capacity crowd at The O2 in London observed a one minute’s silence as a mark of respect for the victims of the tragic events in Paris on Friday night.
“This doesn’t feel now so insane early because we’ve had the week of preparation, we’ve both had a match now”. He also expounded on his thoughts on the Syrian refugee crisis that he had witnessed on a fact-finding mission to frontline state Serbia.
Federer and Djokovic will now meet on Tuesday in a match likely to decide who wins Group Stan Smith, and tournament organisers will hope that at least bucks the trend of one-sided singles clashes.
But Berdych won five games in a row on his way to levelling the match. Ever since then to this point, it’s been seven years of a long process of learning, ups and downs, doubts, self-belief, a few tough moments where I even considered of not playing tennis back in 2010. But there is one trophy they all really want this week.
Ultimately, Nishikori’s slight superiority told when he broke in the penultimate game to win the first set 7-5.
Federer was in ruthless form at the London finals a year ago, only for him to withdraw just hours before a showdown with Djokovic citing a back injury.
The World No. 1 was ruthless from the onset on Sunday, breaking on his third break point to take a 2-0 lead over Nishikori.
The Japanese had lost to Novak Djokovic in his opening round-robin match, while Czech Berdych lost to Roger Federer.
Federer began the second set in much better fashion as he broke straight away by moving Berdych off the baseline and putting away the short replies from Berdych.
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The eighth-ranked side beat home favourite Jamie Murray of Great Britain and Australia’s John Peers 6-3, 7-6 (7/5), the fourth-ranked pairing.
