Washington final 'not the end' for Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, says Alex de Minaur
On the Spaniard’s valiant attempt to control his emotions in defeat, and the Aussie’s empathy in victory.
The problem, or one of the many problems, with choking in tennis is that there are so many ways to do it.
You can feel your elbow turn to concrete, and struggle to get the racquet all the way through your swing. But when you try to avoid that scenario, you can rush through the stroke way too fast and fire the ball 10 feet long. When you start to build a lead in a match, even a tiny one, your mind can drift to the finish line and make you nervous in advance. On the other hand, when you’re behind, you can play with nothing to lose—right up until the moment you level the score. Then the nerves, exasperatingly, kick in again.
All of those terrible thoughts came to mind while I was watching Alejandro Davidovich Fokina melt down against Alex de Minaur in the final of the Mubadala Citi Open on Sunday. The Spaniard’s choking style tends to be the second one I mentioned above: He rushes, swings too hard, and sends the ball careening wildly, with none of the topspin he usually puts on it. It looks like he just wants to get the stroke over with ASAP. In February, Davidovich Fokina lost the Delray final to Miormir Kecmanovic from 5-2 up in the third set, after reaching championship point twice. In March, he lost the final in Acapulco to Tomas Machac, after having a set point in the first set.
This time, Davidovich Fokina served for the title at 5-3 in the third, and went up 30-0. He looked relaxed enough on the outside, but obviously that wasn’t the case on the inside. First he double faulted, then he pulverized the first forehand he saw, about 20 mph faster than necessary, and sent it wide. Then he sailed a shaky ground stroke well long and was broken.
By that stage, his look of calm was long gone, and would never return. Over the final six games, Davidovich Fokina stared, bug-eyed, at his coaches after his misses. He pounded the court in desperation. He collapsed onto the net after a de Minaur backhand caught him going the other way. He practically choked himself in rage and disbelief after his lost opportunities. And he squandered three championship points.
These are the moments when a mental coach might tell a player to “Slow down and take a few deep breaths,” or “Remind yourself you still have the lead,” or “Stick to your rituals,” or “Go back to doing what got you here.” In a perfect, emotion-free world, that’s the right advice. But watching Davidovich Fokina blow up, it was hard to imagine any of it having the desired effect. Reason didn’t stand a chance against the raw emotions overtaking him.
Any fan watching might have been screaming at the TV: “Just calm down, Foki, you’re making it worse.” I think I said something similar. But I also know that this is a lot harder to do than it looks from the outside. My choking style has always been like Foki’s: I rush and go for a winner as soon as possible. It’s hard not to see and feel the finish line and not want to leap across it as quickly you can, without having to be patient or construct a point.
The impressive thing was, while Davidovich Fokina was losing control between points, he mostly regained it during them. He didn’t choke on his match points, didn’t rush, didn’t try to blast a winner right away. De Minaur was just one shot better each time.
“You are a hell of a competitor, a hell of a player. No one on the tour wants to play you. This is not the end, this is only going up for you." De Minaur to Davidovich Fokina
Maybe that was why Foki was calm again during his excellent trophy ceremony speech, crediting de Minaur for deserving the win, and emphasizing the fact that, while he’s now 0-4 in finals, he has reached his pre-season goal of making the Top 20 for the first time. Where there was raging anxiety from him and his team a few minutes earlier, now there were smiles. Competition turns us, briefly, into different people.
One person who seemed to understand was his opponent. Afterward, as Kecmanovic had done in Delray, de Minaur came over to console Davidovich Fokina on the sideline, and made a point of telling him that he’s going to be holding up a winner’s trophy soon. The Aussie was as exemplary in victory as Davidovich Fokina was in defeat.
“You deserved it today. I just got lucky,” de Minaur told ADF. “You are a hell of a competitor, a hell of a player. No one on the tour wants to play you. This is not the end, this is only going up for you.
“Today it went my way. I’ve had a couple of brutal ones not go my way, so I’m glad this one went my way.”
It can be difficult, when a match is over, to understand why we acted the way we did under pressure. That’s one reason why those clutch moments are hard to handle; you can’t really practice for them. There’s no way, when you’re not competing for real, to wind yourself into the same crazed frame of mind. All you can do is look back at what you did when those moments came, and try to find a way not to sabotage yourself quite as badly the next time. Hopefully Davidovich Fokina can take heart from de Minaur’s words, and do it better the next time.