The two are closely matched on evaluations going into the last, writes Jack Houghton, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we will see a drawn-out match…
Preparing the data for this particular side-market preview, it was a surprise to have to trawl back almost five years to locate the recorder that I used the previous time Djokovic and Nadal met in the closing of a significant: the 2014 French Open. That it has been so long says something about the increasing fragility of the duo, especially the injury woes and private strife that has witnessed both having extending intervals from the court in the last few decades.
They are back, however, with Nadal, particularly, appearing as imperious as when in his peak, showing hard-court form that most (myself included) assumed was beyond his brittle body’s capability. That has meant that my assertion – that an outsider could mess the centenary celebrations of the Big Three – has not been borne out, regardless of the strong performance of pre-tournament 90.00-recommendation, Daniil Medvedev, who temporarily looked to trouble Djokovic within their last-16 experience.
No, this year’s Australian Open title goes the way of their institution and, although Djokovic is the slight favourite at 1.81 to Nadal’s 2.22, I’d struggle to separate the two. They enter the closing boasting near-identical Elo scores according to my ratings and, whilst Djokovic’s superiority increases on that front when filtering hard-court matches only, which has more to do with Nadal’s recent inability to progress more than a few rounds around the challenging stuff before retiring with injury than it does some other playing inferiority. And, since Dan Weston asserts in his semi-final preview (check it out, together with his upcoming final trailer, here), it is Nadal who seems at the ascendency in Melbourne.
Most Aces – It is all about the Purchase Price Given their pre-eminence in the last couple of decades, it’s always startling to reflect how few aces this duo serves, demonstrating how much the game has changed since the 1990s, as it seemed as if large servers could eternally dominate the men’s game, except for a brief interlude during the clay court season, when some smaller men would get to play a few more matches.
The ace count within their own matches is usually low and closely contested, but, up to now, head-to-head, Djokovic has served more on 32 occasions, accounting for 63% of their masters. This last figure is a little skewed, however, with a few matches where Djokovic dominated the ace-race, like the mammoth five-setter semi-final at Wimbledon this past year. It’s worth remembering that eight of their matches have seen the duo tie on ace count.
According to the data, Djokovic should most likely be about 1.56 to serve the most experts, which seems to be roughly where the market is settling. If the odds dropped as much as 1.40, however, I’d be a coating, hoping to get a repeat of the 2012 closing here, where Nadal won the ace-race from one.

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