It's Roger and Rafa

Roger Federer cruised through another three-set win today, and by sunset the Dream Final, Part 2, was all set. It will be Federer vs. Rafael Nadal again, but I'll leave my thoughts on that for tomorrow. The outstanding feature of the clash between Federer and Nikolay Davydenko today was that Little Nicky the found a way to work himself into 17 break points and managed to convert just 3 of them -  about, oh, 10 shy of what he would have needed if he hoped to emerge from the  mists of obscurity into the bright sunlight of a Roland Garros final.

This was waste - dissolution of epic proportions, and please, none of the hooey about Roger "lifting his game", or "playing the big points" better. This was Kolya getting caught by his wife in the cathouse, pants around his ankle, empty bottle of whiskey in hand, goofy grin plastered on his face. This was Wilie Nelson, making 17 billion dollars and ending up owing money to the IRS. This was Enron, Tyco, and Titanic, rolled into one. We know and understand about "big points", it just that any match that has a grand total of 43 break points can't be said to have any "big points" at all - it's like the football shills declaring every other Monday Night Football clash the Game of the Century. You watched, you scratched your head, you asked yourself: How the hail did they do that?

In his presser, The Mighty Fed paid Davydenko the ultimate backhanded compliment: *
*

Which means, if I understand TMF correctly, that he was just as mystified by Kolya's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as were you and I.

Kolya summed it  up as well as anyone:

But here's something else: Davydenko has been bothered by a bad back, and when someone brought it, up late in the presser, he sounded surprised - and embarrassed.

Awww, Kolya, we'll always love you. . And don't believe the hype! Winning has nothing to do with it.

At times, it seemed that Davydenko and Federer were playing hockey, flying around, banging slap shots that kept clanging off the posts and crossbar, with Federer now and then lighting the red lamp. This undoubtedly had more to do with Davydenko's quickness and "fast'" if light ball. When one or the other guy plays a certain way, it's sometimes very difficult for his opponent to resist getting sucked into the gestalt; in that sense the players are combatants attached like two puppets on the same string. TMF's great achievement yesterday lay not in converting a whopping four of the 15 break points he created, but in getting involved in a crazy smackdown and finding a way to walk away, 3-up.

By contrast, the Nadal/Novak Djokovic was played in an atmosphere of gravitas, at a measured (for some reason I want to say "dignified") pace. Nadal played tennis that has not been seen at Stade Roland Garros since the heyday of Bjorn Borg - no wonder Borg picked TMF to win in Paris, this kid from Majorca poses a serious threat to his reputation as the best clay-court player of the Open era.

Djokovic played tennis that was scary good most of the time and terrifying good the rest of the time. He had just one real chance to get into a match, though, which should tell you something. After regaining some momentum by extending the first set (he was down at one point, 2-5) to 5-7, he held and had an unexpectedly tired-looking Nadal down, 0-40, in the second game of the second set. But Nadal pulled himself together and held. It t was the turning point - if a three-set match in which the loser got just 10 games can be said to have one. If you want to compare the break point stats, Djokovic converted two of six, and Nadal six of nine.

The most striking thing about the match was the way Djokovic displayed his youth and relative inexperience in ways that had nothing to do with his shotmaking. From early on, he was a mite theatrical, twisting his head this way and that after losing a point, shrugging his shoulders, manipulating his racquet as if it were an instrument entirely unfamiliar to him. His body language said: Man, you don't know how tough it is to be out here playing Rafael Nadal in the Roland Garros semis. . .  It bespoke a disparity between his talent and execution on one hand, and his self-assurance on the other.

But there was a more quantifiable mark of his youth on display as well. He got tired. He's just 20 and lean, with a fair amount of filling out to do. As he said in his presser:

On Sunday, youth and inexperience will play no part in the proceedings. Can't hardly wait.