Of all the 27 times Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer have played thrust-and-parry with each other — 10 times in Grand Slams — this one, in last night’s Australian Open semifinal, had a little different feel.
Nadal poured in more body-shot first serves at Federer than he normally does, especially on the ad side, and he wasn’t nearly as concentrated on Federer’s backhand as in previous matches. Federer, meanwhile, was more aggressive, particularly with his backhand, where he seems to have purged himself of all those useless slices and decided to hit more through the ball.
But for all the tactical changes, one thing in these Nadal-Federer matches remains the same, and that’s the little buzzer that goes off in Roger’s head somewhere in the vicinity of the seventh or eighth stroke, if the rally extends that long, telling him to hurry up and end the point.
And that, my friends, continues to be the salient distinction that almost always leaves Nadal a clear cut above the 30-year-old Swiss, and was once again a major factor in this 6-7 (5), 6-2, 7-6 (5), 6-4 triumph.
No doubt a succession of coaches, including the current counselor, Paul Annacone, have cautioned Federer about pulling the trigger on a risky shot from some cramped position on court, or from becoming completely frustrated by Nadal’s defense and retrievals.
But anyone who has played this game will tell you that in the heat of the moment, that little buzzer trumps all the coaching advice you may have gotten and, wham, even though you know this is losing tennis, your patience runs thin and you fall prey to some fantasy about hitting a spectacular shot.
That, among other things, is what is killing Federer in these matches — that and Nadal’s mental strength, which prevents him from panicking when Roger connects on a couple of low- to middle-percentage shots in a row. Nadal knows that if Federer is presented with 30 opportunities to squeeze the trigger on a questionable attempt at an outright winner, he’s going to win 10 of those and lose 20.
And Nadal’s attitude after Federer scores one of these winners is to just move on, play the next ball. How well does it work? Nadal now holds an overall 18-9 head-to-head edge on Fed, he’s 8-2 in Grand Slam matches and has won the last three times the two men met in a Grand Slam final — all on different surfaces.
You can crystallize Federer’s impatience with one statistical summary — 46 winners and 63 unforced errors, and, in the final three sets, much worse — 20 winners, 42 errors. Contrast that with Nadal’s 36 winners and 34 errors and, voila!, that’s the short of it.
To be sure, Federer is still one of the five best players in the world, but this semifinal loss makes eight Grand Slams since he won his last major title, at the 2010 Aussie Open. Pete Sampras had a drought that long, too, before winning the 2002 U.S. Open and retiring.
But it’s not clear at all, with Novak Djokovic, Nadal and Andy Murray all now fully matured players, that Federer will break this title-less streak at the French in June, or, for that matter, that he will ever add to his record list of 16 major championships.
At 30, he’s fit enough to reach the semis of a Slam, but is he fit enough to compete after nearly two weeks against the very best? In Roger’s last eight Grand Slam losses, he has failed to hold set leads in five matches, and he’s now yielded leads in his last three major losses — a one-set-to-love lead over Nadal is this semi and two-sets-to-love leads over Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the 2011 U.S. Open semis and the 2011 Wimbledon quarters.
As for this match, which sends Rafa into the final against either Djokovic or Murray, here are the important moments:
* Down a set and an immediate break in the second, Nadal broke back at love and rolled to a 6-2 win. With Federer serving at love-30 and 2-3 in the second, Nadal hit the shot of the match. On a full sprint from wide of his backhand sideline he tracked down a deft Federer high backhand, sharply-angled volley and crashed a forehand winner on the dead run. He was about one foot from the Lacoste box where the base linesman was sitting when he finished the point.
* Down a break in the third set, Nadal broke back at 15-40 with a pinpoint cross-court forehand pass, leaving a great number of people wondering why, if he was going to approach the net, didn’t he go to Nadal’s backhand side or down the middle instead, and it wasn’t the only time Federer exercised questionable judgment on his approach shots.
* In the third-set tiebreak, Nadal squandered a 6-1 lead but captured the set at 7-5 with yet another body-shot serve that left Federer cramped and unable to control the return.
* Finally, on the second match point, he induced a forehand long from Federer and went into one of his joyful on-court celebrations.
Later, he was asked on court by Jim Courier whether he wanted Djokovic, who was 6-0 against Rafa last year, or Murray in the final. “Whoever is playing poorer,” Nadal quipped, showing that he, too, can pull the trigger quickly to go for a winner.
Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com