Does it feel like the ground is shifting under us, just a little? You never know about these changing of the guard moments, and exactly how they’ll play out, until a few years have passed. We remember Pete Sampras’ win over Ivan Lendl at the U.S. Open in 1990 as a decisive breaking point between one decade, one era, and the next. But it actually took Sampras a couple of seasons to grow into his role as the next No. 1. In 2008, many of us saw Rafael Nadal’s win over Roger Federer at Wimbledon as a classic guard-changing moment, from one living legend to a younger legend in the making. It wasn’t: Federer was back as the Wimbledon champ and world No. 1 the following year. But who knows, maybe it will turn out to be similar to the Sampras situation. Maybe only now is Nadal consolidating that 2008 victory. Whatever happens in the future—and it will all be moot if Nadal loses to Berdych on Sunday—Rafa and Roger presented a striking contrast in their quarterfinal matches on Wednesday. While Federer’s return on break point at 4-5 in the fourth set against Berdych was slumping into the net on Centre Court, Nadal was stomping around Court 1 more quickly, and with more forthright confidence, than normal. He looked like nothing, not even the normally dreaded and dangerous Robin Soderling, was getting in his way, which is not how he looks all that often. There's usually a hint of worry there, but I didn't see it against the Sod. As Federer’s Wimbledon was ending, Nadal’s future at the tournament appeared to be opening up.
Before Nadal takes his next step into that future on Sunday, there's another match to be played, the women’s final, between Serena Williams and Vera Zvonareva. Williams, as you might expect, leads their head to head 5-1, though that record isn’t quite as relevant or damning as it might appear at first glance. The two haven’t played since 2008, on clay in Charleston, and Zvonareva was able to take a set that day. While Williams is the legend, Zvonareva, a lifelong Grand Slam underachiever, has a game that can hang with hers.
There are times when I’ve watched Zvonareva cruise through a quality opponent and wondered how she doesn't own at least one major. Then, typically, I won’t see or hear of her again for six months. Her career has been full of false starts, stall-outs, and sudden losses of momentum right at the moment when you think she’s ready to do something significant. Zvonareva is best known, of course, for her dramatic meltdowns—she’s given us two classics in the last year alone, one at the U.S. Open and the other in Charleston—but her game, when she’s comfortable and playing within herself, may be the smoothest and most fundamentally sound of the Russians’. When she’s good, she looks as good as anyone.
The trouble for Zvonareva against Serena is that she’ll have to play a little outside of herself, with a little more pace and risk, to take control of rallies. Serena feeds off power, obviously, and she can lift her game—with her serve, her speed, her swagger—to places where Zvonareva won't be able to follow. On the positive side for Zvonareva, I thought Serena looked a little nervous in the semis against Kvitova, and those nerves didn't fully go away until the final two games. Serena started tight, she played the tiebreaker tight, and she didn’t loosen up a whole lot in the second set. Kvitova was able to run her, and to dictate, which was surprising. I’m not sure Zvonareva is the athlete Kvitova is, but she has the superior ball-striking skill. I’ll give her a set. Serena is 12-3 in Slam finals. Two of those losses came at Wimbledon, but I don’t think there’s going to be a third this year.
Serena in three.
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The men’s final, on paper, is just as much of a mismatch as the women’s would appear to be. Any casual fan would say, "Nadal plays Ber-who?" Of course, that’s what any casual fan would have said when Berdych played Federer in the quarters. The final presents an odd scenario. If you look at it from an historical perspective, and if you believe that the best players are born for the biggest occasions, then you’re going to think that a Berdych win would go down as one of the biggest upsets of all time—like Johannson over Safin. And, looking back, if Berdych does win, it probably will be thought of that way. But anyone who follows the game knows that the prospect of Berdych winning is not all that far-fetched. In reality it would be more like del Potro over Federer at the Open last year—the general public was stunned, but the rest of us just saw it as confirmation of a powerful and talented player coming into his own, which is exactly what we’ve seen from Berdych so far in 2010.
That said, the greatest players do come up big in matches like this, as Nadal did in a similar situation against Soderling in Paris. More important for Rafa, he has that 2008-like momentum going right now, a sense of confidence that he gets when he’s been wnning for a long period of time, and which has eluded him for the last year. It’s a confidence that shows up whether he’s playing his finest tennis or not. On Friday he was even with Andy Murray for eight games. The quality of play was very good from both sides; you wouldn’t have said that Nadal, while he was the favorite, had any kind of edge. Then at 30-30 in the ninth game, Murray hit a good serve up the middle. Nadal read it, jumped on it, knocked Murray back with his forehand return, and won the point with a winner on the next shot. A few seconds later he’d broken, and a few minutes after that he’d won the set. It was positively Sampras-like in its opportunism. Murray and the crowd, so hopeful a few minutes earlier, were quietly stunned.
More crucial still was Nadal’s play in the second-set tiebreaker. After an iffy set—he seemed to have a letdown after the first—Nadal threw in a highly uncharacteristic double fault at 5-5 in the breaker. Murray, who had just hit two aces in a row, missed his first serve at 6-5. Instead of playing it high and safe, which is his normal returning style, Nadal went after his forehand return up the line. It stretched Murray wide, and Nadal finished the point at the net with a drop backhand volley. More than anything, there was a lot of belief in that point.
Nadal has a 7-3 record against Berdych, and he’s won the last six times they’ve played. They’re was once bad blood between the two, but they’ve patched it up. The last time they played, Nadal won in two close sets in Indian Wells. Berdych had his chances, but he caved when he got close in the second. Two weeks later, though, he would play a similar match against Federer in Key Biscayne and find a way to get over the finish line. In that sense, he won’t be the same player Nadal faced in Indian Wells—he’s reached the semis at the French, beaten Federer twice, and is in the Wimbledon final. Belief shouldn’t be a problem after all of that, but you never know. Berdych has never played anything like a Wimbledon final before, mainly because there’s nothing quite like it in tennis.
He'll have to serve well, of course, and use his slider into the deuce court to Nadal’s backhand. He’ll have to dig out the slice backhands that Rafa is sure to throw at him, and he’ll need to stomp on Rafa's topspin, both with his forehand and backhand. You might think the match will be on Berdych’s racquet, but that’s what the experts said before Rafa’s match with Soderling. It didn’t turn out that way. Nadal took it to the Sod, in a complete reversal of the way he’d played him in the French final. Don’t be surprised if Nadal tries to go toe-to-toe with Berdych as well.
Nadal in four