SPORT IN JANUARY

Almost two years ago, on 31 January 2010, I started this blog with a post on the Australian Open. 602 posts later, it is fitting that the Australian Open again features.

In the longest Grand Slam final ever, Novak Djokovic yesterday won his third Australian Open title, his fifth Grand Slam tournament, and his third in a row. In beating Rafael Nadal 7-5 in the final set, he came back from 4-2 down in the fifth, and extended his winning run against the world's number two player to seven in a row, the last three of which have been in Grand Slam tournaments. Djokovic fully deserves his number one ranking.

As at the U.S. Open last year, the semi-finals came down to the top four players. Nadal beat Roger Federer in a match that I thought Federer would win. However, at 30, Federer no longer has the legs (or perhaps the desire) to run for absolutely everything, and that's what Nadal made him do for four gruelling sets. In the other semi-final Andy Murray had Djokovic on the ropes with two break points on Djokovic's serve at 5-5 in the fifth. But the Serb produced the sort of resilience that has been the hallmark of his game since the beginning of 2011, and that was that.

Comparisons will inevitably be made, but I think they are difficult. What separates the really top players in tennis is will. Djokovic has oodles of it; but he still only has five Grand Slam titles, so it is not surprising. Federer has 16, which means that he is not going to drag his aching body over the same sort of obstacle courses that the younger man does. Having said that, I still believe that Federer has the talent to win another one, not least because he husbands his body rather well.

In another arena, Denmark yesterday won the European handball championships (widely held to be the most difficult) in Serbia, beating the host nation 21-19 in the final. The Danes had a miraculous tournament, since they lost two of their opening three games, and entered the super 6 stage of the competition needing both to win their last three games, and to get help from other teams. They beat Macedonia on a goalie save with 8 seconds to go and a breakaway goal with 2 seconds to go; beat Germany and Sweden; and then watched as Poland beat Germany, after being two goals down with two minutes to play. That was enough to get them to the semi-finals, where they won comfortably over Spain, and then took the hosts in the final. The latter had survived a heated semi-final against arch-rivals Croatia, in which one of the Serbian players suffered an eye injury caused by a thrown coin.

Underdogs going into the tournament, Serbia showed how important playing at home in front of passionate fans can be. The big disappointment were France, reigning Olympic, world and European champions, who won only one of their games and finished a lowly ninth.

Walter Blotscher