As it has 20 of the 27 times they have met, victory favored Spain’s Rafael Nadal over Switzerland’s Roger Federer when tennis giants met Thursday night on Melbourne’s Rod Laver arena to determine who would advance to the finals of the Australian Open tennis tournament.
After the match, Nadal said that Roger Federer had motivated Nadal throughout his career. “It is fantastic to have one player in front of you, seeing him without mistakes, having a totally complete game—All my career I tried to keep learning because I always saw in front of me one player better than me,” Nadal said on ESPN after the match.
Rafael Nadal played his game, making 77 percent of his first serves, hitting few errors, and taking advantage of Federer’s faults. Federer made poor shot choices on occasion, feeding Nadal’s forehand when he might have gone elsewhere, hitting 63 errors for 46 winners and served at 64 percent on the match. After the first set, which Federer won after nearly an hour’s struggle, the Swiss player was on the defensive for the rest of the match.
Federer took a quick two-break lead in the first set and won it in a tie-break, serving at 71 percent, but his first-serve percentage dropped to fifty for the second set, which Nadal won in only 44 minutes.
The third set started with Federer breaking Nadal, but the Spaniard broke right back and took control of the set until the seventh game, a long struggle which ended with Federer getting the service break. Again Nadal broke right back, unwilling to let his opponent gain any momentum.
Federer forced another tie-break to end the 67-minute marathon set. Nadal took the score to 6–1; Federer fought back to 6–5 before succumbing.
Federer was on the defensive throughout the final set, fighting off multiple break points until finally losing serve in the ninth game and losing the match in the tenth.
Nadal said he expected Federer to come out aggressively; the key was to wait out the first rush.
“When Roger plays like this all you can do is watch him and wait for your moment to try to start to get the rhythm. That happened this time after he got to 4–1 [first set.]
“After that the match was very close. At the beginning of the match he was playing much better than me but in the last part of the first set I felt that the level was very close or even I felt I was a little better than him. That gave me a little more calmness for the second set.”
Nadal will face the winner of Thursday night’s Murray/Djokovic match.
