Rafael Nadal destroying Roger Federer in a Clay court final is not news. We’ve seen it before, when Federer was in his prime, too. Neither man’s fans will forget Nadal’s destruction of a prime Federer in the 2008 French Open final to the loss of 4 games.
Nadal winning his seventh Italian Open final, there’s nothing new about that either.
The only news worthy aspect of the whole torrid affair was Federer making the final, his first of the year, the longest he has been final-less in his career since we care to remember. True, he may not have had the most difficult of opposition. Janowicz and Paire are worthy adversaries but Masters 1000 winners and men with remarkable clay resumes they are not. Even lacking match practice Federer has enough class and experience to make his way past them.
Nadal, as we all know, is an altogether different proposition. Even on Federer’s best surfaces in his best days, the Spaniard has proven a disastrous match up. Defeats in Miami in ’04, in Dubai in ’06, at Wimbledon in ’08 are testament to that. The huge top spin laden groundstrokes relentlessly fired by the Spaniard to the Swiss’ backhand coupled with the insurmountable mental hold gained as the Nadal wins built up, an even heavier factor than those afore-mentioned forehands and backhands, proved over and over to be the undoing of Federer and on his least decorated surface in his least prolific days anything other than spirited resistance would have been a surprise.
Matters looked grim from the outset. Federer won the first game on serve but in the third was broken as Nadal’s tried and tested formula proved its obvious genius once more as a shanked backhand errored from the Federer racket. Five games later and Nadal had the first set 6-1. Nadal broke early in the second and dreamy memories of Roland Garros ’08 for Nadal and his supporters were nightmaring their way into the minds of Federer and his fans. At 6-1, 5-1, the prospect of Federer’s worst ever defeat in a big final was a few shanked backhands away.
Nadal is a Federer fan though as much as the best of us, in fact, better than the best of us. No one loves the Swiss, respects him more than Nadal. The Spaniard dropped his serve and then put up little resistance in the next game. There you go, the ’08 French Open will go down as your soundest beating, he said. And then, some mercy shown, he promptly resumed his more familiar role of Rafael Nadal, Federer destroyer on Clay as he served out for the match to claim another Masters 1000 title, a record 22nd, and another defeat of Federer, his 20th.
No news is good news as they say, except in the media when it’s kind of necessary. And no news, when it’s Nadal beating Federer on Clay, is only bad news for the Swiss. And, as unconsoling as it is, it is not just bad news for Federer. Nadal’s win does the news hungry sports media no favors, either. The sole beneficiaries are Nadal himself, his fans and the odd sadist who likes to see their history made at the expense of one of the sport’s greatest talents, his rare ignominies in the game dished out by his bete-noir, bloody and mostly merciless, on the dark red clay courts of Europe.
thetennisreview 
Leave a comment