Brutal symmetry, rather than excellence, marked day two of the ATP World Tour Finals, the supposed end-of-season gathering of tennis’s best players, although the paying public might not have seen two 6-1, 6-1 matches, each taking less than an hour, as the acme of entertainment.
Certainly, the world No1 Novak Djokovic, was irresistible in dismissing the US Open champion Marin Cilic in 56 minutes in the evening match. There was pretty much nothing the Croatian could do against the rampant Serb. Djokovic stretched charitable waffle to the limit when he said: “It’s been a great, great match. Marin as a US Open winner has a lot of confidence, but I managed to neutralise his serve and get a lot of ball back in play and that was part of the tactic.”
Anyone watching the demolition would struggle to recognise that assessment. Djokovic bulldozed Cilic from start to finish. It was as one-sided a beating as Sergey Kovalev’s dismantling of Bernard Hopkins in the boxing ring in Atlantic City on Saturday night.
As for Tomas Berdych’s capitulation by the same score in just two minutes longer earlier in the day against Stanislas Wawrinka, well that was nothing short of abject. As the Czech admitted, it might have been his worst performance at this level – worse even than his defeat by Djokovic in Beijing last month, when he managed to win only two games.
So, what does this say about the tournament and the state of the men’s game? This much: they are all exhausted but some have legs left to impose their will.
