Note: links are used throughout this article. The links aren’t visible naturally, so I’ve bolded the places where links are embedded (headings are not links).

I’ve been a tennis fan since the 2016 Roland-Garros tournament. Though I’ve enjoyed every step of the journey so far, some parts have been more fun than others, and this is mainly due to the fluctuating quality of play. The 2017 Australian Open? Loved it. The U.S. Open that same year? Not so much. If a cluster of great matches makes an entertaining tournament, a cluster of entertaining tournaments makes a truly special year. And the year of tennis I’ve experienced that makes me feel this way the most is 2018.

2018 is dear to me for two main reasons–that it featured the most bruising, physical tournament I’ve ever seen in the women’s Australian Open, resulting in a Simona Halep who had given every last drop of her endurance across three marathon matches over the fortnight and still had to settle for the runner-up spot (more on that later) and that it was the last year when the Big Three shared the entire major haul, getting at least one each. But 2018 featured several quality-packed contests involving none of these five players, helping compose a joyous calendar.

In the words of Rowan Ricardo Phillips at the start of his book The Circuit, I won’t break down everything that happened in 2018, but rather the parts of the year that spoke to me the most: some general storylines, some micro match analysis. Without further ado, let’s get into this memorial of a fantastic year of tennis. This will be a long article.

Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber

Part I: The Match

Halep and Kerber played the best women’s match of the year just 25 days into 2018. Halep, the top seed, had little difficulty reaching the semifinals save an absolute slugfest in the third round against unheralded American Lauren Davis. Davis had actually been the better player during the match, but suffered the extreme misfortune of cramping just as she’d lined up three match points at 11-10 in the third set on the Halep serve. Halep saved them all, then went on to win the match 15-13 in the decider. Kerber was seeded 21st following a disappointing 2017, but had cruised through several matches and outdueled Su-wei Hsieh in a tough three-setter.

Kerber-Halep is a dream matchup. Both women lack easy power, but are astonishingly adept at hitting down the line off both wings and are elite defenders. The result? Rally heaven. The exchanges that Kerber and Halep produced during this semifinal were on another plane from most other great points. Four of them are seared into my mind. One of them was so awe-inspiring I dedicated an entire piece to it. Halep’s speed clashed with Kerber’s reach and ability to hit balls from extremely low positions on both forehand and backhand as each player tried to bash the ball past their opponent.

Kerber turned the match into a fiercely even affair after Halep reeled off the first five games. By the third set, each player was cracking groundstrokes of considerable weight and power while sprinting and straining to reach those crushed by their opponent. That either player managed to hold up against the onslaught of their opponent’s baseline missiles is remarkable. As much as I’d like to describe each of the best rallies, I fear I won’t do them justice. In case you’re wondering, the four that I’ll never forget are at 5:55, 9:04, 12:00, and 13:01 of the match highlight video.

Here’s the link to the full 15-minute highlight video. Enjoy, because it doesn’t get better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEb1mg8mtSg

As wonderful as the rallies were, there was another dimension to this match: match points. At 4-5, 15-30 in the third, Kerber tried to smear both lines in the deuce corner with a backhand down the line. A challenge revealed that the shot had missed narrowly, giving Halep two match points at 15-40. On the first one, Kerber forced open some space on the deuce side with an inside-out forehand, then, cool as you like, stepped inside the court and attempted the exact same shot she’d missed moments earlier.

The ball landed cleanly inside both lines: winner. It was one of the boldest shots I’d ever seen. Attempting a down-the-line winner on match point is risky, but to do so when you’ve missed the exact same shot on the previous point? Outrageous. Gutsy beyond belief. Champion-esque.

Kerber went on to hold serve (Halep made an unforced error on the second match point), then broke Halep at 5-all. At 6-5, 30-15, she smashed an inside-out forehand that Halep managed to get a racket on, but drove straight into the ground. The point was decisive; to say that Kerber had reversed the momentum is inadequate. She had bent it to her will. And like Halep, she had set up two match points–only these were on her serve.

Astonishingly, Halep saved the match points in exactly the same fashion: one winner, one via the opponent’s unforced error. She broke back to force the deciding set to 6-all. With 2018 being before the era of deciding-set tiebreaks to 10 points, the glorious set was to continue until one player led by two games. With Kerber serving at 7-8, despite a crosscourt backhand saving yet another match point, Halep finally broke through. As Kerber’s final backhand sailed long, Halep raised her arms aloft. Before crossing herself after the victory, as she customarily does, she looked down briefly, smiling with something between disbelief, pride, and delirious joy.

Part II: The Aftermath

The post-match stat sheet revealed that Kerber had gone 7/7 on break points. In the crucial moments on her opponent’s serve, the German had been perfect. Yet when it came to the two match points in which she had the help of her own serve, Kerber went 0/2. The magnificent semifinal had inflicted some ironic cruelty on Kerber as well as what was surely considerable soreness in the legs.

Halep, advancing to the final, clashed with Caroline Wozniacki, the 2nd seed. That the matchup was even happening was insane. Wozniacki had scrapped out of a 1-5, 15-40 hole in the third set of her second-round match with Jana Fett, saving two match points. Halep had saved a total of five in her wars of attrition against Davis and Kerber. And after all of that physical play, after these two had been dragged to the brink multiple times, after the upsets of half of the top eight players before the quarterfinals, the tournament would see the world’s #1 and #2 players clash for the Australian Open title. It was impossible and perfect.

Wozniacki would pull out an incredible 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4 win to claim her first and only major title. She was indescribably happy after the match, likely in part because she’d finally shed the dreaded “best player never to have won a major title” label. That backhanded compliment was passed down to the vanquished Halep instead.

I have never felt as bad for a runner-up as I did for Simona Halep at the 2018 Australian Open. In her third round, semifinal, and final matches alone, she played for a total of eight hours and 53 minutes (an insane 2:20 of this was taken up by the third set of her match against Davis, which was as long as the entirety of her semifinal with Kerber). That’s an average of nearly an hour per set, many of them played on tired legs against driven opponents playing their best tennis, running Halep into the corners. Mere hours after the end of the title match, Halep was admitted into a hospital so she could be treated for severe dehydration. It was a masterpiece of physical effort that deserves to be heralded as much as anything that happened in 2018; it was the definition of “emptying the tank.” Yet Halep did not win the title in Melbourne.

This story has a happy ending for both Halep and Kerber. Almost poetically, they would go on to win the next two majors: Halep reigning in Paris, Kerber dominating in London. They even finished the year ranked #1 and #2. Some stories in tennis don’t end the way they’re supposed to–Roger Federer having to sit on the sidelines old and injured as Djokovic and Nadal surpass him, for instance–but this one did. It was a defiant screw-you to the negative aftereffects of their heavenly semifinal, an instant shedding of the hangover that comes with a tough loss. It was as if Halep and Kerber were saying the tennis we played in Melbourne was simply too good for us not to end 2018 without a major. We’re not stopping until we do.

And they didn’t, and in their perseverance they weaved one of the most beautiful stories in a year full of them.

The Second Resurgence of Juan Martín del Potro

Few have had as much bad luck with injuries as the big Argentine. His wrists have tormented him so much that when his body cooperates for long enough that he can painlessly thrash those titanic forehands for a while, practically the entire tennis world flashes sappy happy smiles at his success. In 2017 he’d enjoyed a comeback at the U.S. Open, coming back from two sets down against Dominic Thiem in a match you have to see to believe, then getting the best of Roger Federer in a bizarre four-setter that brought back memories of the 2009 final, in which Federer was also doomed by the inability to win enough big points.

But it was in 2018 that del Potro finally got to experience life as a top player without injury constantly rearing its ugly head. He won his first Masters 1000 title in another extraordinarily strange match against Federer in Indian Wells–for a set and a half, del Potro looked to be in control against the then-world #1–almost shockingly so. But he failed to take a pair of championship points in the second set tiebreak, and an hour later Federer led 5-4, 40-15 in the decider, with serve.

Federer has an aggressive mindset against whoever he plays. 99% of the time, this helps him. Against Juan Martín del Potro, it’s detrimental. Federer tries to go after del Potro’s forehand surprisingly often, as if he wants to prove that his own forehand is better. While it probably is, this is a needlessly risky tack. Why give an opponent the opportunity to hit their favorite shot, especially when that shot is one of the most firepower-laden shots in tennis history? Federer has been burned by that forehand plenty of times, and in several of those cases, being burned was avoidable.

Federer didn’t really make that mistake in the Indian Wells final until break point at 5-4 (he went to del Potro’s forehand with a somewhat central inside-in forehand and the Argentine thrashed a winner into the deuce corner). Instead, he got trigger-happy with the drop shot. He attempted one at 40-30 that seemed to catch del Potro by surprise, but it fluttered into the net. At ad-in, match point #3, Federer tried again, but the shot was too deep and del Potro lumbered up to it easily, poking a winner down the line.

Federer would never have another match point. He had started 2018 by winning 16 straight matches–as a 36-year-old. He’d made an improbable ascent to the #1 spot in the rankings, an honor he had last held in 2012. His already-groundbreaking longevity was taking on new dimensions. He’d won his 20th major at the Australian Open and looked to be the nearly overwhelming favorite for Wimbledon, whether he elected to skip the clay season or not.

But the Indian Wells final arrested his momentum. Federer would lose in the first round in Miami, in another third-set tiebreaker. He’d skip the clay season, then after a dominant four rounds at Wimbledon, lose in the quarterfinals to Kevin Anderson from two sets and a match point up. Time would then be taken off for a hand injury. He’d recover some imperious form by the Paris Masters, but at that stage Novak Djokovic was back and if not better-than-ever was scarily close to it, and beat Federer in the semifinals (in yet another third set tiebreaker). At the U.S. Open, Federer would lose a nightmare match to John Millman–humid conditions, roadrunner opponent, forehand misfiring.

The Swiss hasn’t won a major title since that incredible start to 2018. At the time of the Indian Wells final–Wimbledon ahead, Federer still ranked #1, Djokovic on court but struggling mightily to find any kind of form–few would have said Federer had won his last major title. It’s difficult to know what the end is until the months and years to follow have helped explain.

Back to del Potro–he didn’t stop with Indian Wells. He reached the quarterfinals at Roland-Garros and even pushed Nadal into a love-40 hole at 4-all in the first set. Considering the stage and the opponent, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Nadal lost just three games after that deficit, but del Potro had made a great showing on his weakest surface.

Speaking of Nadal, one of the best surprises of 2018 was the reignited rivalry between him and del Potro. The pair met again at Wimbledon that year, then again at the U.S. Open. Their clash on the lawns of London was one of the finest of the year. It took all of Nadal’s considerable drive and talent to fend off del Potro’s serves and forehands–indeed, Nadal required a new tool in the form of prolific forehand drop shots to get across the line, 6-4 in the fifth. The Argentine was understandably devastated, but he’d been the fifth seed at Wimbledon, and had played a magnificent match typical of an even higher-ranked player. He had lost, but he was coming.

At the U.S. Open, site of his triumph nine years prior, del Potro stormed through six rounds to the unchanged, delighted cheers of the crowd. They hadn’t forgotten about each other, the boisterous tennis fans and del Potro. Dozens of comically huge on-the-run forehands were hammered for winners, but del Potro did damage with his backhand, too, showing a willingness to hit down the line as well as to slice endlessly crosscourt. It was a shame that Nadal, worn down by a four-set slugfest with Khachanov lasting four hours and 23 minutes (the Russian had a set point to take it to a fifth, to boot) and a brutal five-setter with Dominic Thiem, had to retire from his semifinal with del Potro, but the Argentine was in fantastic form and had pushed Nadal to the brink at Wimbledon, so no one could seriously argue Delpo didn’t deserve to be in the final.

Alas, in his dominant return at the tail end of 2018, Djokovic had re-established a set of rules which had dictated men’s tennis for years: he didn’t lose if he played well. He was the toughest out on hard court. And the tennis would be brilliant, but anyone besides him, Nadal, and Federer would have to beat multiple members of the exalted trio to win anything big.

The fairytale ending would have been del Potro winning a second major at the site of his first. After nine years of on-and-off injury, he’d receive great quantities of joy where it had first arrived, and he would prove that if healthy, he could mix it up with the Big Three. Instead, Djokovic beat him in a relatively anticlimactic three sets, notching his 14th major title. The Big Three are ruthless in major finals, even against crowd favorites. They’ve lost a combined 30 major finals, and 22 of those losses were to another member of the group.

Djokovic vs. Federer

I: Cincinnati

Djokovic’s resurgence in late 2018 was fierce, carrying him to the late rounds of all the hard court tournaments besides Toronto. And there to meet him in the final of Cincinnati and semifinal of Paris was none other than Roger Federer. At this point in my tennis-following career, I was still a diehard fan of Federer’s. I also despised Djokovic. When getting into the sport, I was drawn to the way players behaved on court. I loved Federer’s mild fist-pumps and easy, calm disposition. And I couldn’t stand it when anyone broke a racket or screamed at an umpire or the crowd (this still makes me cringe), so I had a viscerally negative reaction to Djokovic.

When Djokovic and Federer were set to play in the Cincinnati final, my underdeveloped tennis brain was confident that Federer would win. My logic was that Federer had crushed Nadal throughout 2017 and Nadal had pushed Djokovic to the brink at Wimbledon, so by the transitive property, Federer would have few issues with beating the Serb. A Tennis Channel graphic detailing Federer’s success against Djokovic at Cincinnati made me feel even better.

Over the next three years, I would slowly learn the importance of matchups, as well as that every day is different in tennis.

As you can imagine, the events of the 2018 Cincinnati final did not align with my expectations. Things unraveled quickly. I remember the 30-30 point in Federer’s first service game; the Swiss hit a great crosscourt backhand and looked certain to win the rally, but Djokovic executed a two-step pass with a long sprint in between. Federer held that first game, but it had required considerable strain. Djokovic then held easily for 1-all.

This set the tone for the match. By the time the dust had settled, Djokovic had broken Federer three times and lost his serve just once, hitting huge second serves in excess of 100 mph throughout the final. I was baffled.

My bias and Djokovic’s absence of good form in 2017 and some of 2018 meant that I had no idea what made him a good player (had you asked me in late 2018 who had the better backhand between Djokovic and Federer, I can’t definitively say that I would have answered Djokovic). I’d seen plenty of highlights, but wasn’t paying attention to analytics. I had little to no concept of return depth or consistency. But the Cincinnati final was emphatic enough that I was seriously concerned about the rest of the year. Djokovic had just beaten Federer at a tournament that the Swiss tended to dominate, and hadn’t seemed to work particularly hard in taking the title. If he can do that so easily, I wondered, what will it look like when he plays at his very best?

My answer would come in the final of the Australian Open final at the beginning of the next year. That, and paying closer attention to clips of Djokovic’s best matches in previous years, would finally get me to start understanding and appreciating his game.

II: Paris

My confidence had taken a serious hit after Cincinnati, so while I did watch the Paris semifinal, I expected another resounding Djokovic win. I remember celebrating when Federer reached love-30 on Djokovic’s serve at 2-all in the first set, something that happened once if at all at the Western & Southern Open.

It was clear early that this match was different, though. Federer was more locked in, serving more accurately and slicing frequently to avoid being caught in unfavorable patterns. He saved four break points at 3-4, one with a miracle volley off a Djokovic pass that clipped the net. Federer lost the first set tiebreak after leading 2-0 and 6-5, but at least he had been in the match.

At 5-all in the second, Djokovic had two break points. Federer saved them both, one with an inside-out forehand winner that brushed the line. At this, my expectations rose again. Federer wasn’t at his best in Cincinnati, I understood. This is the real Roger. And in the next game, after seeing just a single break point in the match thus far, Federer broke to 15 with a forehand winner down the line to tie the match.

Federer’s play in the third set lifted my expectations even further. He went for backhands down the line–a shot I’d always wanted him to hit more–and made them, landing four clean winners in the decider. He fended off yet more break points. But in the tiebreak, he fell apart. He double-faulted and missed returns. By the time he collected himself, it was 1-6 and the match was gone. He had no apparent game plan, or at least not one he was capable of following at that time.

Oddly enough, I was mostly unbothered. The loss was crushing, but I was elated that Federer had gone toe-to-toe with Djokovic after the Cincinnati disappointment.

In retrospect, this match was my chance to better understand what separates Federer and Djokovic. Federer had gone unbroken in the match, incredibly saving 12 of 12 break points. And he’d been opportunistic, taking one of the two break points he saw. But despite never losing serve, he was playing under constant pressure. Federer won the aces tally 18-8 and served at an impressive 71%–yet Djokovic, who served at 69%, won 45 receiving points to Federer’s 29. The signs that Djokovic was by far the better returner were there, but I wouldn’t see them for some time to come.

Match of the Decade

Matches at Wimbledon are traditionally overhyped. A good match that goes the distance is sometimes deemed a “classic,” even if it’s well short of, say, Djokovic-Delpo in the 2013 semifinals. Decent finals are sometimes crowned “match of the year,” etc. But in 2018, on the men’s side, the best quality tennis really did culminate at SW19. The aforementioned Federer-Anderson and especially the Nadal-del Potro quarterfinals were spectacular. But each paled in comparison to the highest quality match not just in 2018, but the entire 2010s decade: the Djokovic-Nadal semifinal.

If the 2012 Australian Open final was defined by physical endurance and will, this match was defined by pure skill. Each player was hitting winners of all kinds, and simultaneously–they both had their microscopic lapses, but Djokovic and Nadal were playing well at the same time from first ball (a forehand winner by Djokovic) to last (a sharply angled crosscourt backhand forcing an error from Nadal).

A book could and probably should be written about this match, such were the number of rallies and narratives to look at. But what I’ll remember most is that midway through the epic, the moment where Novak Djokovic at his best reappears can be pinpointed.

Really, it wasn’t a shock that Djokovic got his teeth into the match. Even though Nadal was ranked #1 and in searing form, the Serb had been building steadily since Rome. His grass-court credentials equaled Nadal’s and he’d won Wimbledon more recently. Not only that, but Nadal was coming off that four-hour, 48-minute marathon quarterfinal with del Potro.

So despite Nadal’s status as favorite, Djokovic playing fantastic tennis early on wasn’t what determined whether or not he was back. Djokovic’s game, despite its faltering in 2017 and early 2018, was still technically perfect. What remained to be seen was whether the Serb had managed to keep his iron will and pressure-proof tennis from the glory days of 2015. Midway through the match, he got an opportunity to answer that question.

At one set all and 5-all in the third with Djokovic serving, Nadal was on the prowl. On the first point of the game, he pummeled a slightly short Djokovic forehand with a forehand down the line, then sprang up to the net to put away an easy volley. At love-15, Djokovic went to the tactic that had historically bore fruit for him against Nadal: pinning him in the backhand corner. The Serb ripped an inside-out backhand, an inside-in forehand, and a backhand down the line in an effort to open up space on the deuce court, but Nadal stayed tight to the centerline after each retrieval. The first time Djokovic strayed from this strategy, hitting a crosscourt backhand, Nadal destroyed a forehand winner down the line for love-30. It was an incredible shot, and Nadal had sent an imposing message in winning the point: I’ll demolish anything you send to my forehand. That kind of tactical pressure on top of a love-30 hole late in a crucial set of a huge match is not easy to deal with.

By any and all realistic predictions, the winner of the third set was going to win this match. Nadal got close to beating Djokovic from two sets to one down at the 2012 Australian Open, and Djokovic got close to doing the same at Roland-Garros in 2013, but the fact is that these two are almost always just too consistent, too solid, too mentally sharp to allow their rivals to win two consecutive sets from behind. So Djokovic was in a tough position: he trailed in this beyond-crucial set, and Nadal was hitting his biggest, most fearsome weapon without fear. Yet the Serb answered the call.

At love-30, Djokovic bashed a 117 mph serve down the tee that threw up chalk from the centerline; Nadal barely got a racket on it. At 15-30, he forced an error from Nadal with an inside-in forehand. And at 30-all, arguably the biggest point of the match at that stage, Djokovic fired an ace down the middle. As he saw the serve go by Nadal, he extended his grunt in satisfaction (something like “wa-EEEEEH!”). One point later, Djokovic bellowed in celebration (“‘MON!”), walking to his chair with the hold of serve.

Djokovic was back. The serves had been brilliant, but what was more important was the evidence that win or lose, Nadal was going to have to come up with the goods on every big point. Even hitting his forehand down the line with such consistency wouldn’t be enough; Djokovic was so engaged and sharp that his outstanding play became almost an afterthought during that 5-all game.

(This perception would intensify as Djokovic won the third set 7-6 (9), saving a trio of set points in the tiebreak.)

It took me over a year after the match to watch the replay in full, but even then, with the landscape of tennis changed and the result already known, it was evident to me early that the match was otherworldly. Even as Nadal lost the first set, winning just six points on the return, he appeared to be playing very well. Early in the second set, Djokovic chased down an inside-out forehand from Nadal–not one of the screamers that catches a line, but one that was plenty aggressive–and somehow redirected the considerable pace and weight of the ball into a thunderbolt of a winner down the line. This is not a shot that Djokovic, or anyone, ever hits. Afterwards, Djokovic’s only reaction was to wipe down his face with the sweatband on his left wrist. The winner had been hit on the dead run, and the whole thing had happened so quickly (and somehow routinely) that there was a sense of is this really happening?

And over the course of the match, that sense persisted due to the insanely difficult shots that both players hit consistently from sets one to five. Nadal and Djokovic hit every shot in the book and then some over five hours and 14 minutes played across two days. They didn’t make it seem visibly routine–their effort was palpable, as it always is–but it was as if they knew that on this day, the average shot quality needed to win a point would have to be fantastic.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t shocking that the semifinal was so spectacular even though Djokovic hadn’t yet returned to his peak level before the match. The Serb’s best tennis has always come against Nadal, after all, dating back to the 2009 Madrid semifinal, that insane winning streak of six finals in 2011, and the 2012 Australian Open final. They had produced some of the best-ever sets of tennis prior to this masterpiece, but perhaps because they hadn’t yet played an entire match at the insane standard they were capable of producing, the rivalry was often underrated.

After the 2018 Wimbledon semifinal, they at last had a relic demonstrating that they could push each other like no other active players. Nadal and Djokovic had played 51 matches before their all-time best, many of them renowned for their brutal physicality or drama, but now they had one that boasted utter, consistent quality along with their typical tug-of-war-on-a-cliff’s-edge intensity. And luckily for us, the entire thing is on YouTube. The greatest tennis from the greatest men’s rivalry ever.

Understanding Nadal

As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t at all properly appreciate Djokovic in 2018. After watching Gilles Müller beat Nadal in a surreal 15-13-in-the-fifth epic at Wimbledon in 2017, I understood Nadal a bit — at the time, I recognized that Müller was clearly playing better, but Nadal was coming up with the goods on match point so many times in a row that I had to re-evaluate who I thought would win. Müller won anyway, but I learned that it takes quite a bit to beat Nadal.

The 2018 Wimbledon semifinal, once I had watched it in full, provided a more complete picture of who Nadal is on a tennis court: that Nadal plays tennis to fight, and he is at his best when he fights, whether he wins or loses.

Look at Nadal’s presser after the SF loss to Djokovic (Wimbledon 2018). He’d have every right to look back on this match and feel devastated, but I don’t think he is. He’s evaluating, he’s not deluding himself, and he’s learning things about how he feels as it progresses. I think there’s even a sense of pride in the match he just competed in, loss notwithstanding — it’s far from being on the surface, but it bubbles over a bit as he extended his answers to a couple questions. You can just tell that Nadal loves a fight — in 2015, he said his best Australian Open memory was the 2012 loss over the 2009 win. He might be the most fiercely competitive man in tennis history, but, fitting with his more mellow off-court personality, I don’t think he’d scowl if told to sit down with Djokovic to review the tape of the 2018 Wimbledon semifinal. I think, even if he didn’t show it, he’d want to look at Djokovic and say “we did that,” much like the exchange Agassi and Baghdatis had after a late-night match at the US Open in 2006. 

It’s also fitting that a huge part of Nadal’s legacy is his closest losses. As Brian Phillips wrote almost nine years ago in perhaps the best piece on Nadal that exists, his tenacity “takes matches to a plane higher than they have any business reaching.” In a way, this makes the result of the match irrelevant. Nadal’s will is so immense — he can hit a series of short, crosscourt forehands, going down break point, only to crack an inside-out winner on that crucial point — that oftentimes either his drive breaks his opponent or his opponent matches that drive, sending a match into the stratosphere. By the end, it’s less about the result than it is about the sheer impressiveness of the spirit required from the winner, never mind who that winner is. 

This isn’t a quality that always shows up on a stat sheet or should be relevant to the GOAT debate. But for those who crave good all-around tennis above all else, I’m not sure that there could be any greater gift than Nadal’s spirit. It’s a weapon, but one that can help lift his opponent as much as it lifts him (double-edged sword seems the obvious comparison, but given that this quality tends to make for incredible tennis matches and swords are dangerous, it doesn’t feel appropriate). Going back to 2005, he’s played an epic match practically every year, with the possible exception of 2015 and 2016 (and even his losses to Fognini at the US Open and Verdasco at the Australian those years were great matches).

It’s this quality that defines Nadal’s matches. Despite Djokovic playing better for something like 70% of the 2012 Australian Open final, it was Nadal starting to go for more aggressive backhands and maintaining a more even court position that eventually made the six-hour fever-dream the desperate scrap it ended up being. It was the constant cry of vamos after relatively inconsequential points that made the match seem tight even when it really wasn’t. 

Nadal’s 2018 was emblematic of this quality of his. He lost just four times that year, two of them injury-influenced. He held the #1 ranking for most of the year. He took part in the three best men’s matches that year (against Delpo and Djokovic at Wimbledon and against Thiem at the US Open), winning two of them. He played his typically dominant brand of clay-court tennis, losing just once that entire season. And yet, despite his consistently astonishing level, he won just one major in 2018. 

Nadal’s tendency to make matches better is not a winning proposition all the time. Djokovic, who fights as hard much of the time, is bolstered by the fact that his game is better than his opponent’s across a wider variety of surfaces. He will go down as the better and greater player. 

But from a competitiveness standpoint, Nadal is the greatest spectacle in men’s tennis.

The Advent of Naomi Osaka

Like practically every other tennis fan on planet Earth, I watched the 2018 U.S. Open final between Osaka and Serena Williams which had moments of brilliance but was unfortunately marred by arguments between Serena and the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos. But what I missed was Osaka’s rapid ascension that began in Indian Wells and culminated in New York, which had a massively significant ripple effect on the following hard court majors.

As mentioned in the first section of this piece, Halep crushed Osaka on her way to the Australian Open final in 2018. But Osaka got a chance for revenge in the Indian Wells semifinals, and she won the rematch in crushing fashion. It was clear early that Osaka possessed several extra worlds of easy power — Halep hit winners, but generally they were a low-percentage bullet into the corner hit on the stretch (impressive, but extremely hard to repeat) or after a very short Osaka shot (which wouldn’t come often). When Osaka hit winners, it felt routine. Her serve was also massive, and would get even better in the coming years — but she didn’t rely on it too heavily as some players did; she actually made more first serves in her loss to Halep in Melbourne than she did in her lopsided win in the desert.

Halep worked her way to a break point at 3-all in the first, but Osaka denied her the break. Then she denied Halep a single game for the rest of the match. It was a ruthless demolition of the world number one, who was unable to do anything to stem the tide. The skyscraping nature of her peak level was so evident that despite an uneventful clay and grass season, her dominant run at the U.S. Open was no big surprise in retrospect.

“Dominant” might even undersell it — Osaka lost a total of fourteen games in the quarterfinals, semifinals, and final of the tournament. She beat Madison Keys in the semifinals, the 2017 runner-up in New York (and one of the very few who can perhaps equal Osaka’s ability to produce power at will from the baseline) and Serena Williams in the final. And Osaka would go on to win the 2019 Australian Open, becoming the first woman since Serena in 2015 to win consecutive majors.

Osaka’s performance in Melbourne in 2019 might have exceeded what she did at the 2018 U.S. Open — she was pushed far more, but in a spectacular final against Petra Kvitová, Osaka survived a second set in which she failed to serve out the match and then saw Kvitová save a trio of championship points, rebounding to win the decider 6-4. In a big match, being on the cusp of victory, being in a place where you should win, only to be hauled back to an even position, is one of the toughest things in tennis. It’s for this reason that Nadal’s 2008 Wimbledon final win gets so much love, even today — he should have won it in three, then he should have won it in four, but having the mental fortitude to win it in five after some blown chances took the level of the achievement to new heights.

Osaka had imitated that pattern mere months after winning her first major (you have to go back to 2000 and 2001 to see the next-most-recent version of this accomplishment, performed by Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati in consecutive years), establishing Hall-of-Fame-worthy mental strength alongside her wealth of easy power. And she would echo the same U.S. Open-Australian Open double a mere two years later.

Closing Thoughts

2018 was a season I still feel lucky to have witnessed as a tennis fan. The storylines, from Delpo’s feel-good success after his nth comeback from injury to Kerber and Halep’s desire to win a major burning brightly enough to incinerate the pain from devastating losses in Melbourne, were incredible. And 2018 featured more epic matches than the full seasons in 2019 and 2021. On multiple occasions that year, two players met on a tennis court who were at the top of their games for a good chunk of a match — maybe one hour, maybe two, maybe four. The battles that ensued were heavenly, and make for enjoyable viewing even after seeing highlights dozens of times.

2018 might not have been the year in which I learned the most about tennis — in 2019, I watched more women’s tennis, started to understand Djokovic, and started my blog, learning how I felt about the sport by writing pieces on it. But 2018 ignited my love for tennis enough to allow me to do all these things. Had I never seen a match as good as Nadal’s pair of epics at Wimbledon in 2018, I might never have started to watch every single big match late in the majors. If not for Serena’s incredible comeback from a difficult birth in 2017 to make two major finals in 2018, I might not have started to consider the emotional and physical baggage tennis players have to deal with. These lessons have contributed immeasurably to the way I watch and think about tennis, and I’ll always be grateful for that.

Years like 2018 don’t come along often. It’s only in retrospect that I can appreciate how lucky I was to be around for the last year where the Big Three shared the major haul and played all sorts of epic matches along the way and the year when the women’s Australian Open was one of the most wonderfully physically sapping tournaments ever. Not every tennis match is an epic; there are plenty that leave me shaking my head, mourning the loss of an alternate universe in which a match could be better. But when two players step on court, the possibility is always there that they will co-author one of the best matches ever seen.

2018 is as good a year as any to argue that the manifestation of that possibility results in the best imaginable experience as a tennis fan.