First of all i shall back up the content of this post; yes, i expect another Fed-Nad final at RG.

It's good to see Roger is very outspoken about his chances at RG;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/6692443.stm

I have the feeling he starts to believe he can do it, so for me as a fan it makes sense to do that too (finally).
The key factor (something which counts for every player against Nadal) is how to distort Rafa's game; get him out of that forehand corner. Rafa uses a only few patterns to put himself into the position where he can switch from defensing to attacking. Once he managed that he hits 3/4 crosscourt forehands with an increasing amount of angle, depth, spin or speed. Almost everytime a guaranteed winning point. On HC he plays more varied but on clay it's up till now nothing else than; "never change a winning tactic". What we've seen the last few weeks is that Rafa gets into trouble when the opponant brings those high bouncing balls back way before it reaches it's highest point, specially when it's returned down the line. Of course that's easier with a double handed backhand but Roger managed to do it at Hamburg quite a few times. When the ball lands short Roger even has the option to go for a forehand winner, this also worked very well at Hamburg. Personally i don't belief in the "go often to the net" strategy against Nadal (Dubai 2006!), it's more like finish it off at the net while Rafa's somewhere near a linesman.
Nothing new here (in fact; it's a well tested concept by by the likes of James Blake) but somehow Roger always fell back to that passive game with which he will never win against Nadal on clay.
To step into the court and hit it early is a risky game but there is no other choice. I guess Roger finally instilled Einsteins words;

"If you do what you did, you get what you got"

What remains to be seen; was Rafa hitting so many short balls due to tiredness? Is the Hamburg court much more friendly for a player like Roger?
I say; The possible circumstances at RG are less of a influence than Roger's belief.

(the weather forecast is looking good though ;) )

Oh dear oh dear GP, so you still believe it is or was only a mental block on Fed's part? ;) What kind of mental block did he have when he cruised through the first set of last year FO final? And if it was so much a belief issue, why didn't he collapse in second's set Hamburg?

This is actually the core of the problem playing Nadal. You are right. But I'll add the speed and high at which the ball reaches its highest point varies according to factors I have bored you all to death with. But also Nadal very smartly sends balls with more or less spin. This breaks the timing of the opponents who take the ball early. You can notice that in key points like BP or even MP in Rome last year and even in Wimbledon's final the ball goes twice as high over the net and falls vertically with a very nasty spin. This is exactly what he kept doing at the French last year....until Fed's confidence in his shots started to vane. And thos is the reason most players play crap against Nadal despite having a great previous round match.

I hope they both reach the final again. Whatever the weather, I believe Federer can win it but I see his chances being 1 in 5 if it is played under the same conditions as last year.

Good post GP.

Well, at Hamburg there was something different at stake. And in fact in both matches Roger lifted his game as soon as he thought it was over. Sounds like...mental block.
Anyhow, mental block or not, hot weather or not (BTW; i can't be that hot again, 40C?) high bounce low bounce, Roger has no choice, he'll have to toe the baseline. And with that, Tenez, i'm sure we agree. :cheers:

Very much so.

As a side note, I am not particularly impressed to hear Federer say things like

Again he is putting unecessary pressure on himself. He should put himself in the challenger skin, the guy who has all to prove on clay...a la Wilander. Only then will be able to get the best out of his skills.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtm...7/stwhit327.xml

Federer finally has the belief

By Clive White, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:06pm BST 26/05/2007

Have your say Read comments

All sports need great rivalries. Sadly some of the best are very much a part of all our yesterdays: McEnroe and Borg; Ali and Frazier; Nicklaus and Palmer; Ovett and Coe. Faced with a steady decline in popularity since the late 80s, tennis needed another one sooner than most. For the future prosperity of the sport ideally it needed an American, but beggars can't be choosers and most fans are just grateful to have the ice cool Swiss Roger Federer and the macho young Spaniard Rafael Nadal regularly locked in combat.

The only problem is that when the pair have played each other on clay it's been less of a contest and more of a foregone conclusion - until, that is, the Hamburg Masters a week ago, when Federer managed to halt Nadal's record run of 81 consecutive victories on any one surface dead in its red tracks. More importantly, he had stopped the rot of five defeats in five against Nadal on clay. Suddenly the French Open this fortnight had a proper duel on its hands again.

Finally, Federer had managed to transport that peerless, effortless brilliance he exudes on all other surfaces to clay and had done so just a week after his game appeared to be unravelling in Rome, where he and his coach Tony Roche had parted company. Last week in Paris Federer had displayed that same inner peace and calm that one usually only sees in him when he moves from the pulverized brick dust of Roland Garros to the lush green courts of Wimbledon, a place he has made his home, figuratively speaking, these past four years with four consecutive Championship wins.

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Nadal accepted defeat in Hamburg with typical good grace, commenting yesterday "it was nice to lose against the No 1, so it's good finish for unbelievable record, no?" From anyone else's lips that would have sounded trite, but coming from a very proper Spanish boy with old fashioned Spanish values, you knew he meant it. This is a player who stops to sign autographs when he loses instead of striding off in a huff like most, and who then turns up at the press conference with a smile on his face.

"Believe me, on my way from the locker room to the interview room I am very sad, but I know I have to do the press so it's much better for everyone if I feel good and joke a little bit," the 20-year-old told the Sunday Telegraph. "Sometimes in difficult moments it's better to think happy thoughts."

That is why he will have taken the positives out of his Hamburg defeat, which were: a fourth clay court final in four attempts this year - three of which he had won - even though he must have been mentally drained at the time, and that the speed of Hamburg's cold clay is not the speed of Roland Garros's, the ball bouncing higher in Paris, which suits his game.

Federer, on the other hand, goes into this Grand Slam knowing he can beat Nadal on this surface and that he can survive without a coach, just as he could in 2004 when he won three Slams without one. Andy Murray's former coach Mark Petchey, who predicted Federer's Hamburg success, believed he may be better off without one.

"Coaches are a little bit like a crutch, they're someone to blame if things go wrong and they're someone to sort of praise when they go right," he said. "Suddenly he had to take responsibility for his own performance. I don't think he really needs a coach. You find coaches can complicate things when you're as good as he is. There's only a few guys in the world who have won more majors than him, so who's he going to learn from?"

Federer also hopes it will make one or two other players in the draw believe they have a chance against this physical phenomenon in the pirate pants with the bulging biceps. The great Spanish clay courter, Sergi Bruguera, who pulled up just one round short in his own attempt to win a third consecutive French Open in the Nineties, said that one of the reasons why many players submit to Nadal, almost before they've stepped on the court, is because they're not prepared to suffer.

"Nowadays there are not many people who like to fight on the court," said Bruguera, "Maybe Nikolay Davydenko, maybe Guillermo Canas but the rest they hit a forehand, backhand. 'It's enough? No, okay then I go home'. They've lost the sense of tactic and strategy. If you want to beat Rafa you have to suffer."

Bruguera was surprised Federer hired a coach like Roche in the first place. Much more sensible, he thought, to hire a clay court specialist. "If I was a player still I would choose Tony to help me on other surfaces - hard court, grass, but I would never pick an Australian coach if I wanted to win the French Open. When Federer plays Rafa he plays the worst way to play him. With some players you could tell them how to play against Rafa but they're not capable of doing it - he is."

Whether or not Federer has now "cracked the code" for himself remains to be seen, but what he did discover - or rediscover - in Hamburg was the will to win and the ability to formulate a game plan when on that rare occasion just being better than an opponent is not enough. When he lost to Nadal in Paris last year he seemed to run out of ideas too quickly and more surprisingly immediately after winning the opening set 6-1. It was so unlike him.

"You think how gutted he must have been," said Petchey, "and then he went straight to Halle and turned around a match against Olivier Rochus in which he saved four match points. With Federer's record you forget how many tight matches he's had where he's had to find a way to win."

The question is if it does come down to a fifth set is Federer, in Bruguera's words, prepared to suffer? He gave a clue to his answer to that question when asked yesterday which was more important to him, a first French Open title or a fifth Wimbledon one? "It's impossible to make a choice," he replied, "but in my heart I might say Wimbledon."

I've just watched the interview that Roger gave for the BBC earlier this week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/default.stm


I like his attitude. Yes, he has confidence, and yes some can interpret his comments as arrogant.. which is being very very uncharitable. He is equally as generous to his fellow players too, and simply gives credit where creedit is due.. and. yes. that should include himself!!

The vibe that I got from the interview is that he's confident, but not putting himself under pressure. He mentions the fact that this is the second year that he is playing RG with 3 slams under his belt and gunning for that 4th slam. In that respect he is saying that second time around he will feel under less pressure.

I've already mentioned it before in a few postings, but I thought that he was feeling a lot of pressure throughout RG last year. I think that this ultimately worked against him, particularly against Rafa in the final, although a combination of Rafa just being an amazing player and I'd say also some questionable tactics by Fed all contributed to him being runner up last year.

Fed also mentions that he has to 'start from zero' at RG, take every opponent seriously. Kind of a variation of the sporting cliche of 'taking each game as it comes', but I think is especially applicable at RG where every match is likely to be a battle, where neither Fed nor Rafa will be complacent about each match. Many fans of both players will deem a Fed Rafa final as almost a foregone conclusion. I'd say that both players are smart enough not to take that approach.

Will Fed be sufficiently prepared to suffer in order to win (as in the above article)? Absolutely. But then again, so is Rafa. The fitness and mental approach of both players should hopefully be taken as read with Fed's mental approach probably bolstered further by Hamburg. But no counting of chickens just yet. They both have 6 games to win to get to the scenario of playing each other. Am looking forward to seeing how the 2 weeks unfold.. :)

Do you sleep Petalp or are you on a 24h shift? ;)

Good article. A few points:

I always thought Bruguera was a great commentator or at least had a pretty good vision of the current game. He may have expressed those thoughts a bit extravagantly (the Fed v Sampras comment) but my take is that he has a good grasp of the current players and their capabilities as opposed to some former players who tend to compare themself with the new generation.

It is true that the last guy who really battled it out versus Rafa is Coria. I thought at the time that Coria was the better player but very typically did not believe he was. Coria showed that over 5 sets he could have won against Nadal simply on stamina like Fed got him in Miami.

Nowadays, Nadal is a better player than then and battling it out is a wasted cause. Not because his stamina is better than in the past but because his average rally shot is better than the average rally shot of the opposition. They come heavier, longer with even more spin....hence they have no choice and being forced to go for broke. Davydenko however is one of the few who can take the ball early and make him run hoping that in the fifth, if he can get to it of course, Nadal balls will come shorter due to tiredness and that his slower move (due to the his court coverage of the previous 4 sets) could make the 5th an easier set than expeced.

I like this attitude too, it's almost over the top but it also implies he isn't afraid to lose anymore, and that's important

He rarely has to play 5 sets, but he talks about it a lot, knowing there's probably no player out there who can beat him on stamina. Even not Rafa, who's game is less efficient.

Davy is fit and a survivor of nature but he lacks some reserves in that small frame of his. He lost in Rome because during the latter stages of the match Rafa started to show his muscles and Davy just didn't have enough power to answer that.
But that wasn't the case against Hewitt in Hamburg. Rafa served just at the right time some winners and won but in the subcontest; "battle of the grinders" Leyton showed what he's made of. Leyton would have won a best of 5, no doubt.

Thanks for that :ok:
Interesting points from Petchey re: Fed not having a coach. I agree this might help as he has to take sole responsibility for his game.

Also on Brugera -he has a point that Fed should get a specialist clay court coach in to improve his clay game. I also agree that there are less fighters who are prepared to suffer and that helps Nadal to more victories. Fed is not one of them though, if he gets to a deciding set at RG against Nadal he WILL be prepared to suffer and people had better believe it. :)