I had hoped to write a preview to the final that included match summaries of the semi-final matches but I was away at my cousin's wedding in Colorado this past weekend and it proved too difficult to find time to write in between family activities and wedding events. I did manage to see, very early in the mornings, pieces of both matches and they went almost exactly according to expectation.
Davydenko, having dropped the first set in the blink of an eye, pushed Federer in the second set, breaking him for a chance to serve it out. He failed to capitalize on his opportunities and like many Federer opponents before him, wound up in a tiebreaker he was never going to win. Federer is too tough as a frontrunner. By the third set he was hitting unimagineably difficult shots with complete ease, and you could see that Davydenko would have to go home and deal with all of the lost break-point opportunities and deal with the feeling of having played the best tournament of his life and getting chain-whipped for his trouble. The score-line remained close. The match was a statistical dead heat, and the result was another Federer straight-set victory.
On the other side of the draw Djokovic had his chances against Nadal in the first set, but Nadal was too tough mentally for the young Serb. Having recovered from a poor start to take the momentum late in the first set by breaking Nadal twice in a row for 5-5, Djokovic wilted under the center court pressure. During his comeback Djokovic showed the tennis that got him to the final but hitting huge off of both sides and finishing by flattening balls down the line. I knew the minute I saw him point theatrically at a line Nadal had just hit that the youngster was done for. He was playing to the crowd, content to make a good match of it. Nadal could see it, pressed hard, won the set and in doing so he won the match. He pounded out the next two sets in short order, by far the superior player.
The semifinal matches were prototypical examples of why Federer and Nadal are so separate from the rest of the men's field. Federer played a player in his prime at the top of his game who, in the second set, was hitting perfectly in rhythm. Federer adjusted his game, disrupting Davydenko's rhythm by hitting slice backhands and sneaking to net and then relied on his superior serve-return game to win the two tiebreakers. Once on top, he ratcheted up the level of play until Davydenko, playing at his best, must have known as well as we did that he was going home.
Nadal, for his part, started his match slightly nervous. I think it was uncomfortable for him to have to play another youngster, because the thought of losing to Djokovic was actually threatening to him emotionally. After a disciplined start, he let Djokovic back into the first set, getting broken twice, and while Djokovic started to find his groov hitting huge from both sides, Don Rafa was chasing to hang in and struggling with his forehand. Late in the set Nadal began to realize that Djokovic does not hit as well from wide off the court and so he started to shorten his angles and swing the Serb out into positions that forced him to go for winners. Djokovic began to miss some balls, then he began to question his ability to win. At the same time Rafa found range with his forehand, and the thing was over before we knew it.
The semi-finals only reiterated the story the draw had told already. We were watching a two-man tournament. The best player in the world would play the best clay court player in the world for the French Open Championship. A perfect build-up.
For the past three years Federer and Nadal have won all of the major championships. Federer has been number one in the world for the most consecutive weeks, and Nadal has been number two without becoming number one, for the most consecutive weeks in history. Only Guillermo Vilas is close in that category. Vilas, the father of Argentine tennis, is the ghost of tennis history who haunts Nadal. His true magnitude as a player will only be remembered in his home country, because he was only ever the best clay court player in the world and never the best player in the world. I have, by the way, played tennis at Vilas' club on the north side of Buenos Aires and the red clay there is very lovely, as are the tanned, toned, and bejeweled Argentine wives.
But as much as Nadal has his second bestnest to deal with, Federer went into the match the underdog. Nadal killed him at the French the last two years. Federer knew he had to make strategy adjustments to win. When asked about his strategy Roger was typically non-chalant. Maybe I have to mix it up a little bit more, use the slice, and be aggressive when I have the chance. The idea was that he had to use a wide variety of shots, move Nadal up and back, and attack the net to shorten points. If you were to ask the experts he also had to serve around 60% on his first serve and win about 80% of those points. That was the build-up for the final.
I think what everyone was really thinking was whether the match would be another Hamburg, when Federer annihilated Nadal or whether it would be another French Open final in which Federer would play aloof, uncommitted tennis and lose without risking enough to win.
The stakes, as I have been reiterating, were high. If Federer claimed supremacy at the French he would complete a career Grand Slam, kill Nadal's hopes of reaching number one for another year at least, and create anticipation for his calendar year Grand Slam.
If Nadal won, Federer would be stuck in the same historic hamper as Pete Sampras, have less slams under his belt, and remain one injury away from joining a whole host of other great players in the history books. Who remembers how good McEnroe really was during his two years of total supremacy?
Granted, it's more interesting to watch sports when you hype sports and for these guys the final match was just another confrontation in a series of them, one among many to come perhaps. But it was compelling enough to capture the media and the inevitability with which both men marched through the draw in a grueling tournament was breathtaking.
And then there they were across from each other on the red clay on Court Phillipe Chartriers in front of a restless French crowd dying to witness bloodshed and tragedy. The crowd is the third element in Paris. They are soulful, knowledgeable and capricious. I have seen the crowd root a player back into a match from two sets down only to turn on them in the fifth. But this crowd was anxious and polite-apart from the Spanish and Swiss partisans-waiting for the players for their cue.
The first set was disappointing. Federer, a notoriously slow starter, could not hit his first serve in (a dismal 38% with 60% won). His forehand looked wobbly. He wouldn't come to net. He didn't hit his slice backhand. Nadal hit nearly every ball in the first set to Federer's backhand, and the heaviness of his ball combined with the height of its bounce made Federer's backhand look slappy. 6-3 first set to Nadal.
Midway through the second set, Federer seemed to wake up. He began to hit first serves in and whenever he gained court position he looked for ways to come into net. He won 9 of 10 net points in the set, dictated play, and seemed to be on the verge of launching his game off into the hyperspace that he can occupy sometimes. 6-4, second set to Federer.
It looked, as the players toweled off, that we had just send the opening salvo in one of the great title fights. Now the fighters were sweated, had found the range, and they would proceed to pound each other into sporting history.
But Federer got out of his chair and lost the match in the first four games of the third set. He looked confused and listless. He wasted chances to come to net, stopped hitting his slice backhand, and started missing his forehand again. You could hear McEnroe in the booth, like Mickey, screaming at him to go to the net, to attack. Rafa moved beautifully, maintained the pressure on Federer's backhand, passed Federer when approach shots didn't penetrate and took Roger's heart by playing huge on the break points. It's not that Federer couldn't have won a five-set match against Nadal yesterday, it's that if you looked at his face after the third set, you knew he wasn't going to.
The match looked an awful lot like the last two French Open finals. Nadal's plan was to batter Federer's backhand, chase balls, and hit winners down the line off of his forehand when he had short balls. He did exactly that. What was most impressive about his performance was the way he dealt with Federer's attempts to bring him with slice and drop shots. Nadal came forward like a gazelle and shoved balls away for winners. He also passed extremely well. You could tell that he demoralized Federer by neutralizing his break chances.
The missed break chances-while astounding statistically (Federer was 1 for 17)-were not the story of the match. Federer suffers from Boris Becker disease, the desire to beat his opponents at their own game or not at all. He stayed way behind the baseline and was content to rally with Rafa, try to out-hit and out-move him. When he employed his pre-match strategy conscientiously in the second set, he succeeded. When he tried to be the best clay-court player in the world, he failed.
The 2007 French Open turned into a non-story. There weren't really any great matches, except maybe Monfils/Nalbandian and Nadal/Hewitt for its intensity. Everything went according to plan. Rafael Nadal has his third in a row and will go into the grass court season happy and relaxed and see what he can do.
What's interesting now is how Federer will react to the disappointment. I have contended that this is a dangerous time for him in his career. He is rich and he has broken enough records and won enough slams to be thought of as one of the best ever. What will keep him hungry?
His post-match quotes don't reveal the conflict that must be lurking inside of him.
"It was a very physical match from the start - more physical than mental. The sets were long and I was ready for it, but I missed too many opportunities. I couldn't really impose my game, make the game happen with my forehand. It was just disappointing I couldn't turn it around.
Rafael is tough on break points. It's one thing to create chances but you have to convert them. I came back in the second set but had a bad start in the third set which killed it for me. Rafael played an excellent match and deserved to win. The door's still open though. The later it comes, the sweeter it will become. I know I can do it now, that's for sure. I've played very good French Opens, but Rafa came along and swept them all."
Great tennis players always look unbeatable because they have reached a level of play beyond that of their contemporaries. But their orbit is fragile and, like a charged electron, they have to come back. The question is when. Federer has become the best player in the game by believing he can play perfectly. He hits every shot in the game and he tries to hit them all perfectly. In two out of three sets on hard courts he is unbeatable. At Wimbledon he appears unbeatable. But if Rafa wins the U.S. Open this year, which is not at all impossible, Federer will face the mental crisis that Borg faced: how do you re-adjust to the mental challenge of playing against people instead of playing against perfection?
What was so disappointing to me in the final of the French was Federer's unwillingness to try anything new, to engage the crowd, or to do anything at all to throw off Nadal. He seemed beaten the moment he was broken at the start of the third set, almost like he didn't really want to win if it meant not being Federer. He didn't chip and dink, or serve and volley, or attack Nadal's second serve.
Roger said the match showed him he could do it, but I don't see how that match showed him anything like that. I bet if you ask the guys who never won at the French but could have, guys like Becker, Edberg, McEnroe, Connors, Sampras, about Federer's performance over a drink, they would say that you never know when you will get back to the final, when injury will stop you, when one of your strokes will go a little goofy and make you vulnerable.
Federer is still the greatest tennis player in the world right now, and all of the best players in history recognize his brilliance as a player. But he is clearly not one of the greatest competitors in tennis history. And at a time when the third best player in the world is Andy Roddick, the only real measure of his greatness is Rafael Nadal.
The 2007 French Open has come and gone. Nadal beat Federer again in the very same way he has the last two years. And we are left to contemplate the significance of watching two men simultaneously demonstrate unparalleled dominance in their sport. Nadal became the first man since Bjorn Borg to win three consecutive French Open titles, a feat that Justine Henin accomplished on the women's side this year also. And Federer is still the best tennis player in the world. But in an individual sport, to quote French national Christopher Lambert, there can be only one.
