What’s there to say, that’s not already been said, about THAT Nadal-Federer match last week?
Talk about some of the shotmaking tactics.
From the start, Nadal was intent on pounding Federer’s backhand on his serve. In the deuce court, he served repeatedly straight down the centre line; in the ad court, repeatedly out wide. Especially in the deuce court, trying to nail that line, he missed often. But he kept at it.
If you’ve ever watched these two play, you know why. With the way he hits his backhand stroke—much flatter than Nadal—Federer has always struggled to return Nadal’s topspin.
It means he must either muscle through the shot, fighting the topspin that sometimes takes the ball to above his shoulder; or he must stand far back and wait for the ball to loop down to him, which dulls the aggressive edge that is the foundation of his game.
Nadal knows well the problems his topspin poses to Federer, and wanted to exploit it every chance he got.
And yet if you had to pick one remarkable thing about this match, it might just be Federer’s backhand itself. Repeatedly, and especially in a tense fifth set, he flashed it crosscourt.
As a tactic, you might have called it one crazy, audacious move. For in watching Nadal over the years, I’ve lost count of the number of times Nadal has raced to his left to reach a wide shot, then lashed a stinging forehand back over the net. Like the famous rally from a match he played against Fernando Verdasco at the 2009 Australian Open.
Twice in a row Verdasco pushes him wide to his forehand; both times, Nadal, sprinting from the other side of the court, is there in time. A third time, Verdasco slices the ball to land close to that Nadal forehand sideline again, and slices it so hard that it actually bounces and spins further away still from Nadal, again rushing from the other side of the court.
But Nadal gets there again and hits a breathtaking forehand, so heavily spun that you can actually see it curve into the court, leaving Verdasco flummoxed.
So yes, that stretched forehand is a shot Nadal is an expert at. Thus, for Federer to angle his backhand there, you’d think, is asking for trouble. And yet that’s exactly what he did in this match. Again and again, the angle took it past an often flailing Nadal racquet for a clean winner.
That Federer chose to play it was, for me, what marked this match. For it spoke of the mindset with which he came into the match and later spoke of: play the shot, not the man. Federer’s backhand is one of his strengths. So instead of putting a box around it because it’s Nadal across the net, why not use it as he always does?
Or talk of the stature of these two men.
Between them, Federer shone first, winning his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2003. Some argue that with the ageing of men like Stefan Edberg and Pete Sampras, Boris Becker and Andre Agassi, Federer arrived in one of those curious tennis windows when there wasn’t another really top-class player around.
(It’s the argument that’s sometimes made about Bjorn Borg’s dominance at Wimbledon in the late 1970s: there wasn’t a really outstanding serve-and-volleyer to challenge him.)
One sign of this: Federer won that Wimbledon in 2003 against the talented Australian underachiever, Mark Philippoussis.
Whether there’s truth there or not, Federer quickly showed the world just how remarkable a player he was. He rose to No. 1 in the world and began to sweep all before him for several years, gathering up the big titles like he was out picking strawberries.
There was to be, though, a fly in that ointment: one Rafael Nadal. They first met in Miami in 2004: No. 1 in the world playing No. 34, and no doubt tennis fans thought it would be another routine victory for Federer.
But it was Nadal, fist-pumping regularly, who pulled off the routine victory, 6-3 6-3 (and it’s a curious match to watch today, because Nadal regularly does what he does only rarely now: comes in to volley away winners).
Doing so, he had served warning. He won his first Slam at the French Open in 2005, beating Federer again on the way. But with Federer taking two of the other Slams, and going on to take three of the four in each of 2006 and 2007, it was easy to think Nadal might be another of those clay-court wonders whom Federer would beat anywhere else they played.
Except that Nadal was still beating Federer more often than losing to him. In 2008 it was Nadal who took two of the four Slams, defeating Federer in the final at his beloved Wimbledon—widely acknowledged as one of the greatest tennis matches ever played.
In 2010 he won three of the four. By then it was clear: Nadal and Federer were two all-time greats of the game. Even if Nadal was by now winning more than Federer, their matches always offered compelling watching, because of their contrasting styles.
Federer was all style and panache, the elegant fencer to Nadal’s bounding bouncer, all muscle-bound aggression and hustle. And they seemed to respect each other, to know how each brought out the best in the other.
Which brings me to... talk of the rivalry between these two men.
The early years of this decade saw the emergence of a third great champion, Novak Djokovic. In both 2011 and 2015, he won three of the four Slams. With Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka too starting to win the big ones, the era of Federer-Nadal finals seemed to be firmly over.
Besides, if you’re talking of rivalries, there were some far more even ones. Federer and Djokovic have now played 45 times, with Djokovic holding a 23-22 lead. Nadal and Djokovic? 26-23 to Djokovic. Federer and Murray? 14-11 to Federer.
All much more even than the celebrated Nadal-Federer match-up, 23-11 to Nadal before last week’s Australian Open final.
And yet it’s those lopsided numbers that best capture the appeal of this particular rivalry. Here’s a man widely considered the greatest player ever, owner of a record number of Slam titles—yet of every three matches he plays against this man from Spain, Nadal wins two.
If Federer regularly loses to his most dangerous contemporary rival, what claim can he possibly have on being the best in history? In fact, can’t Nadal legitimately make that claim then?
It’s right there, really. Lopsided the rivalry may be, but not so lopsided that Nadal thinks he will win easily, that Federer thinks he has no chance. Just lopsided enough that both players know they have to play their best tennis to win; that they must keep improving their game if they want to win the next time.
The obvious respect both men have for each other stems from that knowledge—this other guy makes me work harder than ever, makes me better at what I do.
It made Federer realize what he did: the shot, not the man. It made Nadal keep aiming his heavily top-spun serve down the T at Federer’s backhand. It made Federer fire that exquisitely angled backhand, over and over again, right where Nadal has so often pulled out extraordinary winners.
And it made for some truly compelling tennis.
Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Dance.
His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun
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