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By Chris Oddo | Saturday May 14, 2016

It was long. It was strange. And it was magnificent.

Novak Djokovic’s 2-6, 6-4, 7-6(5) victory over Kei Nishikori was all of this and more on Saturday night at the Foro Italico in Rome, and more than ten thousand energized spectators packed into Court Centrale to soak up a memorable, emotional encounter that was played with two things that Romans have always loved: passion and zaniness.

More: Serena Williams Sets All-American Final with Keys in Rome

The three hour and one-minute contest started with a thud--literally. Djokovic committed the most amateurish of faux pas when he miserably failed in an attempt to clean the clay from his shoes and instead smacked his own left ankle hard enough to create bleeding and a bone bruise that needed medical attention after the first game.

“Awkward situation,” Djokovic said after the match. “The first game, instead of cleaning my shoes, I hit myself pretty hard, ankle, and actually have a bruised bone which I have right now which was hurting for a while. Then the pain faded away but returned towards the end of the match. Back and forth. I hope that tomorrow it's going to be fine.

“But message to all the kids out there: Be aware, when you're cleaning your shoes, make sure the frame hits your shoe.”

Djokovic was slow to find his footing after the injury and was drubbed in the first set by an aggressive, line-hitting Nishikori, 6-2. It appeared that the Serb might be headed to a straight-sets loss as the second set went on without a break, and the world No. 1 had every reason to be discouraged about his plight.

Djokovic had failed on his first nine break point attempts of the match and he had further distracted himself from the cause by picking up an unsportsmanlike conduct warning after nearly striking a ballkid with an errant return. Djokovic would defuse the situation by high-fiving the kid and apologizing, and he defused the tension of the match further by finally striking on his tenth break point of the evening to steal the set from Nishikori in the tenth game.

“I think I was playing really good tennis in the first set,” Nishikori would later lament. “I was playing aggressive. I think I stopped doing that in second set. Also, he start playing better, too.”

In the third set both players were in peak form, trading jaw-dropping gets and mind-bending ground strokes, particularly after Nishikori fell behind by a break. Not wanting to let the opportunity fall by the wayside Nishikori saved two break points to avoid going double-break and 5-1 down before converting his third break point of the next game to get back on serve at 3-4. (Zaniness re-entered the match at this point when Djokovic shanked a ball wildly in the game and initially believed that the ball was defective. He had no idea that he had broken a string and had to be told by umpire Mohamed Lahyani as he was about to serve the next point.)

From there the pair marched impressively to a tiebreaker, Djokovic holding with authority each time and Nishikori responding to the pressure in kind, even saving a match point at 4-5, 30-40 with a gutsy 1-2 combo.

But Nishikori’s magic dwindled after the first changeover in the tiebreaker. He committed four straight unforced errors, including a double-fault at 3-3, to give Djokovic three more match points. Japan’s top dog was able to save two more to close to 5-6 in the breaker, but an unrelenting Djokovic converted his fourth to seal the victory.

“Maybe there was couple points that I could be little more focus, you know, tried to make more balls on the court,” Nishikori said. “Yeah, maybe I just need more experience, but that's always—he does well in the important points.”

Djokovic, now 38-5 lifetime in the Eternal City, will face Andy Murray in a rematch of last week’s Madrid final.

The Serb will bid for his fifth Rome title, and third in succession. He improves to 37-2 on the season and 9-1 on clay.

It may have been an awkward performance from Djokovic in some respects (see the big bone bruise and broken string for proof), but in terms of intensity, desire and the ability to come through in the clutch, he was a rock-steady pillar of belief.

“One point more on my side than Kei's,” Djokovic said. “And I think that says enough about the match and how even it was. If he would win the match, it wouldn't be undeserved, that's for sure.”

 

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