Rafael Nadal against Roger Federer Fed in the Australian Open final…
Federer was in a trance.
After an injury-plagued year and a perceived decline in Grand Slam performance, the 35-year-old defeated Stan Wawrinka in five sets to go to his sixth Australian Open final and first in seven years.
Why Rafael Nadal, the 14-time Slam champion, has been able to crush him is unclear, even if the 17-time Grand Slam winner intended to let this slip after the match.
Federer said to Jim Courier, “Rafa has clearly given me the hardest challenge in the game.”
“I believe that playing him on clay too frequently in the beginning of my career affected how I performed him on other surfaces as well.”
“I believe that I can play offensively on this floor.
They are now playing that final, thanks to Nadal’s five-set, near-five-hour win over Grigor Dimitrov in the other semi. History says it’s a match Federer is likely to lose – he has not beaten Nadal in three past matches at the Australian Open and has not defeated his great rival at a Grand Slam for nearly 10 years, since the 2007 Wimbledon final.
Federer has a shocking 11-23 record against Nadal – a 32 per cent win rate, while he’s 6-12 (33 per cent) in finals. In Grand Slams, the percentage is lower. Federer has a 2-9 record (22 per cent), while he’s 2-6 in Slam finals (25 per cent). In his Courier interview, Federer hinted that he felt he had become too defensive, too hesitant to take the initiative with his all-court game against Nadal; perhaps the result of trying to play the traditional clay baseline game against Nadal’s mighty top-spin groundstrokes in their early meetings. The Federer single-handed backhand, in particular, has cracked at times under the pressure of Nadal’s relentlessly heavy ball.
