For the 60th time, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal battled on the tennis courts, and for the 31st time, it was the Serbian who won the match.
The last time we saw the two legends of the sport battle it out at the Olympic Games was back in 2008 when they played at the Beijing Olympics. It was a semi-final, and a big miss by Djokovic on match point that allowed the Spaniard to move to the final, in which he bested Fernando Gonzalez in the final to win the gold medal.
How the Serbian reacted after that miss showed how much the Olympics mean to him. Fast forward to 2024, and it's still the same, and he has still not won a gold medal for his country.
He hopes to do it this year, but he had to face a big challenger named Nadal. It's a fascinating matchup because it was the 60th time we saw them battle each other on the tennis court.
It was as amazing as it would have been ten years ago. Nadal has a lot less hair on his head, but he's still Nadal. Djokovic has a knee brace, which isn't typical for him, but he's still Djokovic, and the match was exciting, at least the second half of it.
The start of the match was all about the 24-time major winner, who demonstrated an interesting tactic. He was very aggressive and attacked his opponent whenever he could, and he was precise in doing so.
He also employed the drop shot quite a bit, as his opponent didn't even attempt to run a few of them down. To be fair, they were spectacular, so he likely wouldn't have gotten to them regardless.
Overall, after three games, it was 3-0 for Djokovic, who was better by a good margin. He kept applying pressure, and after a lot battling, he took another break, making it 4-0 in the first set of the match.
Holding the serve was very easy for Djokovic in this match early on, as he took a 5-0 lead, which is when Nadal finally won his first game of the match. The first set concluded after 40 minutes, with the Serbian player winning it 6-1.
The Spaniard was simply misfiring a bit too much with ten unforced errors, quite a bit more than Djokovic's five. He also had fewer winners but picked up some momentum towards the end of the set.
Djokovic continued his excellence by breaking Nadal early in the second set and then held easily to make it 2-0. Nadal just didn't look like a player who could seriously trouble Djokovic at any moment.
The Serbian was hugely motivated, and it showed in his play as he delivered one of the year's best performances. Djokovic showed no mercy as he kept applying heavy pressure on Nadal, and the Spaniard still couldn't find any solutions.
Another break meant that the scoreboard showed 6-1, 4-0, which was a score against Nadal he had never experienced before. And then, Nadal almost mounted a comeback out of nowhere.
He broke back once to make it 4-3 and then played spectacular tennis to make it 4-4. The Court Philippe-Chatrier erupted as the match was heating up. Still, Djokovic cooled it down quickly, as he broke once more for a 5-4 lead and then won the match 6-1, 6-4 to reach the third round of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
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