There wasn’t anything arcane about Rafa Nadal’s victorious game plan this evening: Get on Roger Federer’s backhand, stay on his backhand and keep beating the ball to his backhand side until he breaks down completely.
The only real surprise was in how quickly the breakdown was effected. By the sixth game of the 36-minute opening set, the grim look on Federer’s face said this Sony Ericsson Open semifinal might be a quickie.
And it was as Nadal re-asserted his dominance 6-3, 6-2 over the man some think is the greatest player in the annals of tennis.
It’s one thing to walk on court determined to pin Federer to his backhand side. It’s another matter entirely to execute that game plan, but Nadal did it with near perfection.
In the first set, Nadal was 16-2 on serve and all but two of those 18 deliveries went to Federer’s backhand side, and none to his forehand in the deuce court. Nadal didn’t have an ace in this match, but don’t be fooled. He was in complete command of his service.
Federer failed to return six of the 18 service points in the opening set and a few that he did return were so short or were popped up so badly that it left Nadal in complete command of the short rallies.
And, even as he took control, he just kept pounding on Federer’s backhand — not only with services, but with high-bouncing cross-court forehands that repeatedly flummoxed Federer.
Unable to rely on his backhand, Federer tried to make adjustments, but several times as he tried to dodge the backhand side to hit forehands, he mistimed shots or was late setting up and committed costly errors.
He was awful. He had 38 unforced errors and 20 winners. He was less than 50 percent efficient at the net. In the second set he shanked a forehand into the stands. He let a lob that landed on the baseline drift on him and he slammed the overhead into the net. He missed half-volleys he once could make effortlessly. And one of his first serves to the ad court was so wild it landed about an inch or two from the doubles sideline.
He looked, quite frankly, very ordinary.
After watching one of Federer’s worst performances in a Masters Series 1000 tournament, no one could have been surprised on match point when he had a gimme forehand well inside the baseline and laced it into the net.
Nadal, meanwhile, was brilliant on offense and defense and he played highly disciplined tennis. He has in the last two seasons developed an excellent serve down the T on the ad side as a counterpoint to his usual lefty slice to the ad court corner, and he often uses it to keep opponents from cheating to their left to cover the wide serves.
But he wasn’t going down the middle in this match. It wasn’t in the game plan. He was riveted to Federer’s backhand side and that’s where he kept it.
Nadal’s victory sends him into the final Sunday against Novak Djokovic, who kept his 2011 win streak alive with a 6-3, 6-1, rain-interrupted win over Mardy Fish.
This was the 23rd time Nadal has played Federer, and he has now won 15 of those matches as well as seven of the last nine. Moreover, Nadal now holds a 7-3 lead over Federer in Masters 1000 events and, probably most telling in their rivalry, Nadal has won the last three times they’ve met in Grand Slam finals — those three wins on different surfaces (clay, hard and grass).
For Federer, it was another major event without a title. He’s still good enough to reach the final days of big tournaments, but there is a championship drought. He has gone four Slams without a title and has won only one (Cincinnati) of his last 11 Masters 1000 tournaments.