OK, lets go in depth into why I personally think this match is not going to live up to the hype.
Firstly, what do I mean about the hype? Well, for all the matches they have played in slams, they only truly have three matches that are of legendary status, AO 2012, RG 2013, W 2018. That is their holy trilogy, when they two locked horns and you didn't know until the end who was winning. There is a lot of romanticizing taking place right now in regards to Nadal v Djokovic and it is because of the last match they played here and the last they played in a slam, so I get it. Now, as a tennis fan, I would love to be proved wrong here, absolutely, and be on pins and needles, on the edge of my seat watching another titanic clash between two of the greatest to have ever played the game, but I truly think we will not be entering that level within the stratosphere and here are my reasons why...
If Nadal is to win this match, he cannot afford to get into punishing rallies. For as great as he has looked, IMO he has not moved exceptionally well laterally. Did his footwork improve from the start of the year? Yes, I spoke in depth about that early on during this event. But footwork and overall movement are two different things, Federer's still got the most beautiful footwork imaginable, but his movement is not what it is used to be, just to give you another example of what I mean. Nadal's impressive run has been masked by the fact that the players he played do not have the ability to expose his movement and get him pulled into punishing rallies. I mean, first of all, why would you want to get into that with a baseline rally with a monster like Nadal? However, whenever I have seen him getting into some longer rallies, I have seen quite perceptible degradation in his movement, which for me tells me, he is not fully 100%. Then of course I see what he had on his stomach....He just hasn't had the right opponent to expose that. He has been very clever in playing first strike tennis, there is a saying that the best defense is a good offense, by playing this way, he is not allowing his opponent to engage him in such points that will hurt him.
Djokovic knows this full well, Nadal is serving very well, but serving big at a height that is shorter than Djokovic isn't going to put fear in Djokovic at all. Nadal on his best day of serving is not better than Federer on his best day of serving, and Djokovic handles Federer serve exceptionally well. The faster Nadal will serve, the quicker the ball will return into his feet, the more Nadal will either have to step back to give himself more time and in the wake of that give up real estate, or he will need to do half volleys off of his shoelaces all night long. Novak laughed during his interview when the interviews asked him if he would try to engage Nadal in long punishing rallies, and he said why would he ever want to do that...yet I could see his facial reaction trying to hide that that is exactly what he plans to do.
Djokovic has had the ideal build up to final, and that is he got a couple of tough matches early on, and especially the Medvedev match, which gave him him the confidence that he is more than capable of rallying for several hours here at a very high level against a player who also can grind. Then the Nishikori and Pouille match happened at the right time, not only did those matches significantly cut down the projected court time Djokovic was on, he has spent less time overall on court than Nadal now, but he is for the first time coming into a hard court slam final against Nadal having not played an epic five set semi the round before....Djokovic had to not only physically, but mentally fight past Federer twice saving multiple MPs, past a Stanimal, and past a Lendlized Murray, before meeting Nadal....not this time.
Every single one of Djokovic's shots is working, including the one that Nadal fears the most, the backhand DTL, and unlike Nadal who was sharp early on, Djokovic has done the classic way of peaking at the right time, while cutting court time down, and still having battle hardening matches, and he is coming in mentally and physically fresh. This means he is ready to get into a baseline war with Nadal and expose Nadal's movement. Nadal knows this, he knows that all the other players he has played are not the same as playing the guy who has beaten him 28 time whether he was in form or not. Djokovic is going to use the following strategy, which is back up by the numbers.
During first couple of opening points in a game, expect Djokovic to split his attack 50-50 to both sides of Nadal, he will attack the forehand equally as he will attack the backhand. By attacking the forehand, Djokovic opens up the court, and when the court opens, he gets Nadal on the run and will then punish the backhand. When the game goes to 30-30, 80% of Djokovic's attack is to the Nadal backhand. This effectively means, that Nadal is countering two different strategies in the same game, and this is what throws Nadal off the most, Novak's mid game tactical changes.
IF Nadal is going to win, he has to play exceptionally well, even better than he already he is, full on aggression, first strike tennis, simply not allowing Djokovic to settle into a comfort zone. And for a Nadal win to happen, it will need to be either straight sets or four sets maximum. Aggression, aggression, aggression...If Nadal cannot do this, and falls into the trap, than Djokovic will turn into a python and will squeeze the life out of Nadal, and expose his movement, and Nadal will not be able to take that for five sets either...and it will end in a three or four set win for Djokovic, with the possibility that Nadal could get further injured, we simply don't know what his true physical state is.
At best, this will go four sets, and to me it seems Djokovic is going to have much easier time implementing his strategy, which is his normal way of playing Nadal, than Nadal will, who has to play outside his comfort zone to get past Novak.
