Novak Djokovic

Defending Champion and world number three, Novak Djokovic has done nothing but improve Tournament after Tournament. He is right up there now with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal and these three fantastic players seemed to have formed a holy trinity of Mens tennis. Novak took his maiden Grand Slam, when winning here last year, defeating Federer en route in the semi-final. He played Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final winning in four sets.

Prior to his win here he had reached the 4th Round in 2007. In addition to his Australian Grands Slam, Novak has been runner up at the US Open Tennis in 2007 a semi finalist in France for the last two years and he promises that there will be more Grand Slams to come. It is a very impressive record for a 21 year old.

Djokovic is an all-court player. His greatest strengths includes his dominant groundstrokes, especially the forehand which are powerful, deep, well angled, and hit with strong topspin, although his preffered groundstroke is the backhand. With considerable speed, his serve is one of his major weapons winning many free points from his flatter first serve and employing a sharp curving kick serve as his second serve. Djokovic, while very sound and powerful from the baseline, often finishes points by coming to the net similar to Roger Federer. He also utilizes a well-disguised backhand underspin dropshot and sliced backhand (groundstroke) in his repertoire.