Fireworks

Two days ago, I put up a clip from this year’s Aussie Open and said that it would likely get any tennis-starved fan in the mood for Melbourne next month. Today's should take you a step farther. If you’ve missed the sport, if you’ve missed Rafael Nadal, and if you missed Rafael Nadal playing the sport against Roger Federer, the above highlight reels, from their semifinal in Australia this year, will really be up your alley.

Remember this rivalry? Lefty vs. righty, Bull vs. Maestro, stubborn Spaniard vs. smooth Swiss, shotmaker vs. shotmaker? It’s still the best in tennis. Most observers thought the five-setter between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray was the better semi in Melbourne, but I preferred this one for its daredevil strokes, its mix of offense and defense, its court-expanding brilliance, and its tension—three of the sets were go-either-way nail-biters. It wasn’t perfect, each player looked bad on some break points, and Federer’s forehand, as it has on other occasions against Nadal, faltered along the way. But at its best, Fedal XXVII, in which each man tried to break out of old patterns and bad habits against his rival, was like chess on wheels.

Nadal's 6-7 (5), 6-2, 7-6 (5), 6-4 win clocks in as my seventh most memorable match of 2012, and perhaps the most underrated. By my advanced calculations, it’s also the eighth best of the 28 that these two have contested. How can you not like a match that came with its own fireworks display?

“I think the thing is, early on...wow.”

That’s Mats Wilander’s expert analysis in the first game, after a Federer forehand winner. Mats gets it about right, actually. Federer opened this match on a jaw-dropping roll for a 4-1 lead. As Wilander says later, the remarkable thing was how easy Federer was making it look—move Rafa to his backhand, drill forehand winner down the line. Serve one way, knock off volley the other way.

Most of us who had seen any of the previous 26 matches between these two knew better than to think that it would continue this way. But it should be remembered that Federer had shellacked Rafa 6-3, 6-0 two months earlier at the World Tour Finals in London, and he had dismantled Juan Martin del Potro in straights in the previous round in Melbourne.

Many experts favored Federer in this one. But close Nadal watchers noticed that Rafa had found his own groove in his quarterfinal against Tomas Berdych, which he finished with his strongest play in months—by the end, he was swinging for the fences and connecting on everything. Nadal would eventually turn the tables against Federer and make a similar run in the second set.

Up 4-2 in the first, Federer’s early flurry melts when he serves and volleys twice and loses both points. Wilander, and much of the rest of the world, implores him to do this more often against Rafa, but it’s never quite that easy. Nadal’s passing shots were particularly heavy and and dipping and accurate in this match, and Federer, as skilled as he is, doesn’t normally serve and volley. This clip shows the second of those lost net-rushing points at 4-2, break point. Instead of trying to stick a high volley, Federer carves under it and drops it short. But not nearly short enough. Nadal is all over it.

Federer has excellent hands and volleys, of course, but the net—on regulation drive volleys, in particular—is in the one place where his flowing ease of movement doesn’t help him. He could do with some staccato, Pat Rafter-style predatory behavior up there. As it was, that pass by Nadal got him into this match.

Staying with the Swiss for a moment, I had often wondered why he missed shots against Nadal that he doesn’t miss against other players. This is what I finally concluded in my write-up after this match, in which Federer struggled to find his forehand, for no apparent reason:

"Why does Federer miss shots against Nadal that he doesn’t miss against others? There’s Rafa’s spin, which is different even from other lefties'. There’s the heaviness of those shots as well. And there’s his pressure-creating speed. All of that is a factor, but it's not the whole story. There’s Federer's head, too. He presses on his ground strokes against Rafa, especially on his forehand. He presses and hits one long on a break point early in the second. He presses and buries more than one in the net late in the third set. He wasn't missing those shots against del Potro.

Federer may not believe he can win long rallies over the course of a match against Nadal, but he's at his best when he's patient enough to work the point, and work Rafa to his backhand side. He goes bigger earlier as this match progresses, and it doesn't work."

Watching this clip, you can see that Federer has success when he rolls his forehand to Nadal’s backhand, pushes him back, and does a stealthy delayed net rush. That’s a tough pattern to create over and over and over, but Federer leaves it too often to approach to Nadal’s forehand side. That’s Federer’s natural forehand approach—it’s down the line—but Rafa was on fire with his forehand passes on this day. Best to avoid that side at all costs. Federer finished this match 35 of 57 at the net. Not that bad, really.

As for Rafa, there are a couple of shots in this reel of him getting ready to return serve. He always hops and shuffles and bobs his head and narrows his eyes at these moments like a man possessed, but he seemed especially mongoose-like in this match. I had the feeling that he knew, after the way he finished against Berdych, that he was playing great tennis again, and that, despite having to go through Federer and likely Djokovic, the tournament could be his.

Rafa’s passing shots deserve a highlight reel of their own. He bends them inside the sideline and throws them back against his body crosscourt in mid-run. Here’s my on-site description of the most crucial:

"Everything swings in the second game of the second set, when Nadal hits a running crosscourt pass onto the sideline on his way to breaking Federer. It's the start of one of the most determined defensive performances of this defensive great’s career. There's a cussedness to his gets and passing shots tonight. Federer forces him to go outside the sidelines, and then outside the doubles sidelines, but Rafa goes there. On half a dozen occasions, he hits a shot that I would normally say was not possible.

Typical reaction from the press room:

'He's not going to . . . He's not going to get . . . He's not going to get that . . . He just got that.'"

The match turns on the third-set tiebreaker. This is what I wrote about it at the time, and about how Nadal overcame his nerves to take it:

"The score is 6-2 in favor of Rafa in the third-set tiebreaker. He takes the balls to serve; he has one more before Federer gets his two serves. The writer next to me and I agree that Rafa looks especially nervous for someone who’s ahead 6-2 in a breaker. He doesn’t want to give Federer those two serves. Nadal plays his tightest point of the match, guiding a feeble backhand pass into the net.

A couple of minutes later, Nadal takes the balls again to serve at 6-5. Federer has won his service points. Just as Rafa had caught up from 2-5 in the first set breaker, Federer is threatening to turn this match on its head. Nadal’s serve is mediocre, but when Federer’s return is equally average, Nadal has had enough. He steps around a forehand, drills it inside out, and takes the set. It’s the decisive shot of the match, and a moment of visibly willed confidence."

Wilander says that this point was “predictable” from Nadal. If he means that it was predictable that he would find his best shot on a big point, he’s right. If means that his shot selection was predictable, he’s wrong. Nadal did serve to Federer’s backhand—the body backhand serve rather than the wide one; he has more than one to that side. But the predictable thing would have been for Rafa to go back to Federer’s backhand with the next ball. Instead, he went to his forehand, and Federer couldn’t catch up.

Afterward, Nadal said he had tried to mix in more shots to Federer’s forehand, because Federer had attacked well with his backhand the last two times they had played. Rafa does it on his serve in particular, going to Federer’s backhand just often enough that he knows the forehand side will always be open for him when he needs a point.

Nadal saves his most ridiculous defensive maneuver for when he needs a point the most. It comes when he’s serving for the match at 5-4 in the fourth, ad out. My reaction:

"Federer hits a forehand approach that appears to be a winner. I start to scribble the word “break” in my notebook. I look up and Federer is watching something in the air. It’s the ball. Apparently Nadal has retrieved it. It lands on the baseline. Federer, casual, perhaps because he assumed the point was his, slides an overhead wide. You get the feeling that Nadal would have tracked down a ball hit outside of the stadium at that stage."

There are match-winning shots. Nadal’s I-am-not-gonna-let-this-ball-bounce-twice lob, which dropped out of the sky and onto the baseline, was a match-saver.

Steve Tignor's Top 10 Matches of 2012:

No. 1:The Miracle on Grass: Lukas Rosol d. Rafael Nadal

        No. 2: <em>The Struggle Down Under:</em> Novak Djokovic d. Rafael Nadal  

        No. 3: <em>Olympian Efforts:</em> Roger Federer d. Juan Martin del Potro  

        No. 4: <em>Wooing Them:</em> Victoria Azarenka d. Sam Stosur  

        No. 5: <em>Tightrope Walk Across Paris:</em> Novak Djokovic d. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga  

        No. 6: <em>Winning Like It's 1999:</em> Serena Williams d. Victoria Azarenka  

        No. 7: <em>Fireworks:</em> Rafael Nadal d. Roger Federer  

        No. 8: <em>Sturm and Drang:</em> Angelique Kerber d. Sabine Lisicki  

        No. 9: <em>Sculpting a Strange Masterpiece:</em> Bernard Tomic d. Alexandr Dolgopolov<em>*  

No. 10: Stunner in Paris:* Virginie Razzano d. Serena Williams