MELBOURNE—Talk about an epic. Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray started their match around 7:45 P.M. Friday night; I filed my post on it this morning at 4:25 A.M. I wondered if I was just a slow writer, until I saw a Tweet from the Herald-Tribune’s Chris Clarey. He was finishing up himself and preparing to meet the dawn as he walked back to his hotel. This may or may not be the Happy Slam, but it’s definitely a no sleep Slam.
It shouldn’t go as late on Saturday, when the women play their final, though you never know in a tournament without final-set tiebreakers. Who do you think will win? It’s a good match-up, storywise—young player coming into her own vs. a former champ who has labored hard to find her old form. I’m going to take Azarenka, even though it’s her Slam-final debut. She’s held impressively steady so far.
Before I get to the tennis sections of the local papers, there were two other sports stories in today's weekend Australian that, for whatever reason, I found moving. One was about the Indian cricket batsman Sachin Tendulkar, a legendary figure from what I can tell, who failed to get his 100th 100 in a test match against Australia yesterday. There’s a photo of a joyous Aussie team celebrating around the wounded figure of Tendulkar, with this quote from Australian bowler Nathan Lyon below: “It’s been a privilege to get him out.”
On the next page, The Australian brings us a column all the way from the London Times, by our old friend Simon Barnes. The Great Ponytail laments the words of British government official Jeremy Hunt, who recently referred to this summer’s Olympic Games as a “great business opportunity.” This sets the sentimental Barnes off to find 50 reasons, mostly sporting moments from the last 50 years, why his country still has a soul and can’t be reduced to a brand. What sounds like a baby boom nostalgia trip—No. 46 is, “The Beatles: still the best, forever the best”—ends up being, as I said, moving in its sincerity and peculiarity. Barnes’ No. 4 British sporting moment is, “Virginia Wade winning the women’s singles at Wimbledon in Silver Jubilee year (1977) to a soundtrack by the Sex Pistols: a glorious British contradiction.” Sports as part of the texture of life—well done.
How About "No. 1-less Slammers"? Elsewhere in The Australian, Patrick Smith mounts an intriguing, counterintuitive defense for Caroline Wozniacki. He wonders why we need the No. 1 player to have won a Slam, when we don’t automatically make each Slam winner the No. 1 player in the world for that week. It’s apples and oranges, to Smith. To have any meaning, the ranking can’t just be the measure of any one, or even four, tournaments, but performance over a significant period of time.
*****
About that Decline . . . From the Fickle Media department: On Thursday he was on the way back up; Friday he was all but out of the game; now, on Saturday, Roger Federer has “more Slams in his sights.”
Or, at the Age puts it, “Unperturbed by Rafael Nadal’s apparent mental hold over him, a defiant Federer has vowed to return for many more cracks at the Australian Open.”
The paper quotes Federer’s line about Nadal playing “a bit better against me than against other players.”
Nadal was informed of Federer’s assessment in his own press conference. He agreed that he has “played some good matches” against his rival, but what was important was that he was “ready to play” those particular matches.
*****
Locker Room Talk The Bryan Brothers, on the eve of potentially breaking the men’s doubles Grand Slam record, return to the Age with a behind the scenes column on some of the top singles guys.
Rafa: “His personality has really blossomed over the years,” the Bros write. “He used to be pretty shy, but now it kind of feels like he’s a leader on the tour. He’s a bit more relaxed and voicing his opinions. You don’t see any of that in the locker room, though. He’s probably the most intense guy in there. He usually has his headphones on; he’s got his routine down.”
Janko Tipsarevic: “He’s one of the good guys. He’s really smart, down to earth, and just a cool guy. He has a really good perspective.”
*****
Rafa Answers the Questions Nadal has been taking a couple of fan queries each day for the past two weeks in the Age. There must have been a backlog, though, because he goes all out with seven Q and A's today. Two of them are worth repeating
Miri asks: How many Australian Open towels do you have now? [The players reportedly steal something like 10,000 of them here each year]
Rafa: “I haven’t counted them, and I give them away to my team. But around 10? Don’t tell the tournament though."
Juliette asks: "Hi Rafa, do you have a favorite poem or poet? I remember when you read part of a famous poem at Wimbledon . . . "
Rafa: "They made me read that poem that you find at the entrance of Centre Court [Rudyard Kipling’s “If–“]. It was nice, although tough for me to understand the words.”
*****
Federer, Nadal . . . and Colaci? That’s Dylan Colaci, a 14-year-old who ball-boyed the Nadal-Federer semifinal here. He's the YouTube story of the millisecond, for the catch shown below. Colaci has been interviewed by all of the papers here, but to be honest, I'm not totally sure what the fuss is all about:
*****
Braveheart, At Last I half-expected Andy Murray, despite his fifth set comeback last night, to be raked over the coals in Brit tab-land anyway. This time, apparently, it was different. He wasn’t the loser or the choker or the too passive mama’s boy. The Daily Mail sums up the general reaction with this headline:
“DAZZLING IN DEFEAT, MURRAY HITS NEW HEIGHTS AS HE LOSES CLASSIC DUEL WITH DJOKOVIC Even in the hour of a shattering defeat, his body broken by nearly five hours of relentless combat, Andy Murray could console himself with one thought: He is finally looking and acting like a Grand Slam champion in waiting.”
I wouldn’t go that far, even though the evening was a step forward for him. But it’s nice to see respect for hard work.
Just don’t make it a habit, tabloids. This column wouldn’t be the same if you started keeping things in perspective.
MELBOURNE—For a good three hours, the semifinal between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray here was, to put it bluntly, a mess. Both players were fighting themselves as much as the guy across the net. Djokovic was battling his body, his nose, his allergies, his nerves. He was trying, with intermittent success, to settle down and let the athleticism flow like it had last year. It took him until the fourth set to shed all of his burdens and start looking like the best player in the world again.
As for Murray, he was fighting against his instincts toward safety and counter-punching, while trying his best to implement the more aggressive game plan that new coach Ivan Lendl wanted him to use. It made for a match that neither guy seemed prepared to step up and grab. After one point near the end of the fourth set, Djokovic walked away staggering in pain, while on the other side of the net, Murray was virtually on his knees screaming in anger. Lendl, perhaps channeling Mr. T's Clubber Lang character from Rocky III, gave Murray this pre-match nugget of wisdom: “It’s going to be painful,” he told his player. I guess the guy really does know what he's talking about.
One stat sums up the evening: There were 18 breaks of serve on 50 total break points. This was not an orderly contest. Still, Murray-Djokovic finally did cohere, and its fifth set offered a completely unforeseen turnaround that threatened to turn the match into a classic. The two wounded warriors—Djokovic said that “both of them went through a physical crisis” during the match—came together in the end to make the long, strange night worthwhile.
Let me start with Murray, who lost the match, 6-3, 3-6, 6-7 (4), 6-1, 7-5. We can debate how he approached the match tactically—47 winners and 86 unforced errors at least show that he went down swinging this time—but two particular moments are worth focusing on. One is an example of his characteristic flaw, while the other offers hope for change someday.
The first, and worst, of them came after Murray grabbed the lead for the first time. He ripped his way through the third-set tiebreaker—an ace at 3-3 and a roaring forehand winner three points later put a stamp on it. Now he was up two sets to one; how would he handle having nothing but the finish line in front of him? We didn't have to wait long for the answer. Serving in the first game of the fourth set, Murray suffered a quintessential brain cramp. Rather than finishing a sitter off with an overhead, he hesitated and plunked a swing volley over the baseline. A couple of wild unforced errors later and he was broken. A couple of games after that, he was tanking. Murray may have learned this maneuver from Lendl, who was famous for throwing sets and even matches early in his career. But he hasn’t mastered it yet. One thing you don’t want to do when you tank is let yourself be broken in the last game of the set. But Murray kept letting the balls go by even then, and Djokovic got to start the fifth serving. It proved to be pivotal.
“I guess maybe it was normal there was a letdown in the fourth set,” said Murray, who was thoughtful and positive in his press conference after what had to be a devastating defeat. “That was something I would have liked to have done better, though. I would like to have to played a better fourth set, get off to a better start.”
Murray was tired, but he was also a different player once he had the lead, a less intense and purposeful player—he didn’t know what to do with it.
The news wasn’t all bad for Andy. Something did change in the fifth set. He went down 2-5, then held. Until that point, he had had trouble recovering from his listlessness of the previous set. But as he set up to return serve, he began to fire himself up in a more genuine way than I’d seen from him. Murray was, for once, giving off sincere positive energy. Guess what happened? He played four brilliant points on Djokovic’s serve and won them all. Rod Laver Arena erupted. Hopefully Murray will remember that moment. He appeared, for one game—he hit four excellent returns and two blatant forehand winners—to have cracked the code to his potential.
As for Murray’s opponent, can we start calling Novak Djokovic the Benjamin Button of tennis? He starts matches as if he’s just finished playing five hard sets. He breathes deeply on the first changeover. He shuffles off court in the middle of the second set and sits down in an open-mouthed daze, as if he might not be able to answer the bell. Come the three-hour mark, though, the man suddenly has some spring in his step—he’s rounding into shape. After four hours, he’s sliding and grunting at full stretch, flipping up a perfect defensive lob, and then tearing toward the net to smack a forehand winner to break serve. He might as well be starting the match right then and there.
Djokovic’s old maladies have returned in Melbourne this week; he says he’s struggling with allergies. But there’s always been a mental component to these episodes as well. By the third-set tiebreaker tonight, Djokovic was laughing with his coach at his missed shots and joking around with the ball kids, with no signs of distress. It’s as if he has to work out his nerves, get to a point where he has nothing left to lose—such as being down two sets to one to Murray—and then he can let it rip, which is when he’s at his most dangerous.
Or, as Murray put it afterward, “He runs very, very well when he’s breathing heavily.” Murray said that it was something that he and Lendl “spoke about before the match.”
Djokovic ran very very well indeed in the fourth and fifth sets. He was back to his old defensive tricks, skidding across the baseline and breaking Murray at 3-2 with the defensive lob-forehand winner combination I mentioned above.
The match, after all that time, all of those rallies, all of the crises, came down to two consecutive shots. They were enough to describe the difference between these two players so far in their careers.
Murray followed up his break for 4-5 in the fifth with a strong hold. His momentum carried over to the next game, when he went up 15-40—two break points to serve for the final. Djokovic saved the first. On the second, the two players left exhaustion behind and fired 29 shots back and forth. Finally, pushed into a corner, Djokovic pulled the trigger and put a forehand on the line for a winner. It was this match’s version of the Shot. The shuffling, slicing, hurting Djokovic of three hours earlier was forgotten. The champ from 2011 had finally appeared.
Murray wasn’t finished. He earned another break point. The two began to rally, but rather than go big, as he had for much of the night, Murray stayed safe. Too safe: He sent a backhand lamely into the net. His chance had passed, and his decision to tank the last game of the fourth set came back to haunt him. Serving second, he was broken in the next game for the match.
Ten minutes later, a sweaty Murray was philosophical and even long-winded in the interview room. He said he was happy with his performance compared to his embarrassing loss to Djokovic in the final last year, and that he’s crossing his fingers he doesn’t suffer the same bottoming out, in confidence and motivation, that he has the last two springs. But Murray was honest enough to admit that he doesn’t know how he’s going to feel in a few days or weeks.
Meanwhile, No. 1 Djokovic moves on to meet No. 2 Rafael Nadal. Watching their wins these last two nights, it seemed that either match could have gone the other way. Djokovic could have missed that line-pasting forehand at break point. Nadal could have sent that desperation lob, hit when he was facing his own break in the final game against Federer, a few inches longer.
At the same time, though, this marks their third straight major final matchup, and one of them has appeared in the last seven Slam finals. It could have gone the other way for the world's two best players this time, but it was never likely.
MELBOURNE—“Tennis players are always talking about the zone, getting into the zone,” Mike Bryan told me last week at the Australian Open. “I feel like I’m starting to know what it feels like.”
Tomorrow night, Mike, with his twin brother Bob, will try to break Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge’s men’s record 11 Grand Slam titles. The Bryans are 33 and still going strong. They’re coming off what Mike calls “their best summer ever"; in 2011 they won the Wimbledon and Australian Open titles, recorded their 700th career win together, and finished the season No. 1.
Playing championship tennis into your 30s, and beyond, is not uncommon in doubles. In fact, you might say the Bros are about to enter their primes. The player ranked just below them, at No. 3 in the world, is Daniel Nestor. He'll be 40 in September.
Still, Mike says he’s in a good mental space these days. He credits some of that to brain-training sessions that he’s been undergoing at the offices of a company called Neurotopia in California. Neurotopia, according to one of its founders, James Seay, was begun, “as a medical group providing therapy for chronic symptoms associated with conditions like migraines, concussions, ADHD and ADD.”
Patients’ brain waves were mapped, to see where there were irregularities. Did he or she have trouble focusing, or recovering from stress, or processing information quickly? Treatments were developed to help re-balance brain waves—essentially, to train it like any other muscle.
The following year, Neurotopia began working with athletes in extreme sports, who needed their focus and reaction time to remain sharp over a long period of time. From there, the company has begun to help athletes from virtually all mainstream professional sports, from Nascar to major league baseball to golf to surfing to tennis and more.
“The brain,” Seay says, “like anything else, thinks it’s perfect. We try to fix problems that are there. In the case of athletes, we try to help improve the areas where they need to be strong.”
“It’s pretty wild,” says Mike Bryan, who has done close to 20 mental-training sessions with Neurotopia, and who hopes to begin doing them remotely on the road soon.
The company’s technology certainly has a futuristic feel. It works like this: Sensors are placed on your head, which reads your brainwaves as you take a simple test where you’re asked to recognize visual stimuli and push buttons when you see them. From the results, a “profile” of your brain and personality is created. You’re rated in various mental categories, including Stress Recovery, Focus, and Reaction Time.
I went through Neurotopia’s testing process this winter and received a psychological profile. It showed that I’m able to concentrate for long periods, but that I have trouble recovering from stress—both of these diagnoses sounded about right. They’re also common among tennis players, though the pros also tend to rate very highly when it comes to reaction time.
With your mental profile in hand, therapy sessions begin. Sensors are attached to your head again, and you’re placed in front of a screen with what looks like a car chase video game on it. Except that there are no controls in front of you, no wheels or sticks or buttons. When I started my session, all Seay told me to do was, “concentrate.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I looked at the car and it began to move. It kept moving. It picked up speed and made turns and went over bridges and crashed into the car in front of it (which it wasn't supposed to do; it's a sign that you're trying too hard). I wasn’t doing anything, or thinking of anything in particular, and I began to wonder whether I really was moving the car. But when someone in the room with me spoke, and I answered, the car screeched to a halt.
The idea is that moving the car will train you, unconsciously, to concentrate harder when you need to concentrate—i.e., during a tennis match—and to relax at other times—i.e., when you want to sleep. The car I was moving was at the easiest level. As sessions continue, it gets more difficult to move it, and your ability to concentrate fully and get into the right frame of mind for the task at hand is enhanced.
“By training certain waves to work harder at certain times,” Seay says, “we can change what your mind considers a normal reaction.”
“I’ve got the car moving pretty well,” Mike says of his improvement over the course of his sessions. “I used to overdo it, and it would crash, but now I’ve got it going pretty smoothly.
“I’ve felt a difference on court,” he continues. “I feel like I can hold my focus longer, and I feel like I can turn it on when I need it. I wanted my body to be relaxed while my mind was working, and that's how I feel. I can get into an optimal brain state out there, and I can control my reactions when I miss a shot a little more. Hey, we had our best summer last year, and I’m sleeping better, too.”
Hard to believe? Brain training for athletes, according to Seay and others involved, is in its early stages, and no one knows where it will lead or what it will reveal. One doctor told me that the field is promising, but we need more information to see if it can be useful. Mike’s brother, Bob, for one, has resisted, despite his brother’s recommendation.
“Bob’s skeptical of just about everything,” Mike says. “He doesn’t believe in stretching.”
Skepticism is the healthy reaction, perhaps, but for any tennis player, the possibilities are enticing. Imagine being able to get over your nerves or your tendency to choke or lose focus, the same way you can increase your muscle strength or make yourself more flexible?
“I wanted to be more like Federer, you know,” Mike says, laughing. He hopes to join the Swiss Maestro as a Grand Slam record holder this weekend.
MELBOURNE—After the fireworks, there is . . . the sleep. Last night was as late as I’ve filed an article, 3:00 A.M. or so Aussie time. Part of it was waiting for Roger Federer and then Rafael Nadal to come to the interview room, but part of it was also just time spent coming down from a great match with a hair-raising ending, and an event-filled day of tennis. Noise complaints aside, this has been a good women’s tournament. The new top tier did what they were supposed to do, and we got a pair of chaotically entertaining semifinals yesterday. Still, that story has been drowned out, literally, by the squawk talk. The Herald-Sun's article on the upcoming women's final comes with this headline: "Azarenka-Sharapova is the squeal deal." As I said the other day, the best reason to do something about shrieking is to stop the stories about why nothing is being done about shrieking.
The first men’s semi wasn’t bad, either. Nadal talked in his presser about how unlucky Federer has been at the Grand Slams lately, and Federer must feel snake-bit again after this one. He had a break point at 4-5 in the fourth and played it perfectly, until Nadal ran out of his shoes and dropped a lob smack on the baseline. Before that shot, as Rafa was starting to tighten up on serve, I had begun to think: What if it’s Nadal’s turn to lose after having match points? A few minutes later, it was over.
The upshot is that I opened the hotel curtains this morning to be greeted by the Melbourne sun at noon. I had no idea what time it was—amazing what hotel curtains can do. Which means I better get to my Grounds Pass.
Not So Fast We’ll go off-court, and nearly off-road, to start. It seems that Bernie Tomic’s vaunted new maturity has hit a speed bump. The 19-year-old was pulled over yesterday for the second time in recent months for driving a tad rapidly in his bright orange BMW. This time, Tomic kept driving, straight to his house, where he reportedly locked himself inside while the police waited on the front lawn in what was termed a "stand-off." Tomic claimed the cops have it in for him: “The police officer wanted to hit me,” Bernie claimed. “I don’t know what I am doing. It’s like I killed someone.”
All of which didn’t make Aussie Davis Cup captain Pat Rafter look too good. Even as Tomic was burning up the road near his Gold Coast home, Rafter was talking to interviewers about how much his new star had matured in recent months.
“I was very critical of him last year,” said Rafter, who wasn’t happy when Bernie, against team rules, brought his girlfriend along to team functions during the September tie against Switzerland. “He wasn’t in the right head space. The improvement he’s made, he’s gone in the right direction and he impressed me over the summer.”
Tomic: Still confounding. Fair or not, entitlement has always been part of his persona, and it still is.
*****
Puncher’s Chance Andy Murray is back with another column for The Australian today, a day of reckoning for him. Despite the constant references to boxing and sushi, his articles have been fairly revealing. It's obvious that Ivan Lendl has had a significant effect on him already.
Murray talks about how he hung out with Novak Djokovic last year in Oz and organized football friendlies with him. Not this time. Lendl has taught him to distance himself from his rivals, and that something like football on the side is a waste of energy.
“You have to make sure you put all that to one side,” Murray writes. “I’ll be doing whatever it takes to win tonight. If that means hitting Novak to win a point . . . that is what I’ll do.”
Interesting that Murray wouldn’t just make this shift in his mind, but that he would announce it in print as well.
Then he goes to say what he’ll do if he beats Djokovic tonight: “You can bet on one thing," Murray informs us, "I’ll be tucking into some spicy tuna again tomorrow night.”
*****
Ivan the Engine Driver In other Murray-Lendl news, according to the Age, Rafter believes that just having Lendl in his camp has had an effect on the rest of the tour.
“It makes a psychological difference to the opponents,” Rafter said. “You know, they all talk about Lendl being in the box. So that obviously helps.”
Another Aussie legend, Fiery Fred Stolle, is even more impressed by what Lendl has pulled off. “He’s made a difference in two or three days,” Stolle says. “Lendl’s got him doing things that he didn’t do, and one of them is he doesn’t look up to the box when Lendl’s there. He gets the job done . . . [Murray’s] done it all his life [look up]. But he hasn’t had a coach that’s told him not to. Now he has one.”
*****
Roger on the Run . . . Again As of yesterday afternoon, the tennis world was once more Roger Federer’s for the taking. Most pundits thought his form was too good to be derailed, even by the great derailer, Nadal. Today, Federer wakes up to this headline in the Herald-Sun:
COULD ROGER BE PAST THE FIREWORKS?
“As outrageous as it might sound,” Scott Gullan writes, “it’s increasingly unlikely Roger Federer will win another Grand Slam title.”
I saw it differently yesterday. It may turn out that Federer won’t win another major, but I’m still surprised and impressed by his desire and ability to remain as committed as ever, even after everything he's won. His career, Slam wins or not, now looks like it will stretch longer than I would have guessed two years ago.
Credit Federer also for not rationalizing his losses by acting as if he’s in the twilight of his tennis life. He expects as much from himself as he did five years ago; anything else would be a rip-off to fans of the sport.
*****
Muzz Buzz Now, finally, we’ll see how far Andy Murray has progressed. Muzz’s ex-coach, Brad Gilbert, likes what he sees from the new partnership so far in the Daily Mail:
WHY MEATBALLS AND MELTDOWNS ARE OFF THE MENU
BG says he sees a technical change in Murray’s forehand: “There appears to be a greater shoulder turn to get more side on. It gives him greater power on the forehand to smack anything short away.”
I haven’t noticed this personally, but it’s one more thing to look for tonight.
So does Gilbert believe Murray has a shot? After a thousand or so words on why he’s improving, BG renders his verdict:
MELBOURNE—Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, it’s a special occasion by now, something outside the normal run of a tournament, even a Grand Slam. Their matches aren’t about No. 1, or even, to this viewer, about who’s the greatest tennis player ever. They feel like reverse exhibitions—exhibitions not for fun and shotmaking, though there’s plenty of the latter; exhibitions of how well real tennis can be played.
This one, played to the accompaniment of fireworks on a national holiday, was memorable for tension most of all, with three dramatically concluded, go-either-way sets, and at least a dozen moments of court-expanding brilliance that were better than anything we’d seen before in the tournament. There were funks and chokes and safe play and terrible shots on break points by both guys, but that’s how five-setters go. This one was in doubt until Federer’s final forehand sailed long. It took the most jaw-dropping get of the evening, in fact, Nadal’s scrambling, I-am-not-gonna-let-this-ball-bounce-twice lob at 5-4, that dropped out of the sky and onto the baseline on break point, to keep it from going longer, perhaps much longer. There are match points; are there match-saving points? That was one.
My highlights and observations from Rod Laver Arena at Nadal-Federer/Federer-Nadal XXVII, cherry-picking style.
*****
—At 7:30, the crowd can see the players walking down the tunnel on the big screen in the stadium. There’s a rise in volume as Federer appears on the screen, filling it, looking like one big headband, in front of Nadal. It ascends to a roar as Federer walks onto the court, much smaller now but in the flesh. The camera zooms in on Nadal, who’s still in the tunnel and who seems buoyed by the noise. He picks up his bags and moves out with a spring in his step. It’s a rare moment in tennis, or just about anything else, where each competitor feels like they have top billing. Camera phones click in Federer’s direction, then shift en masse over to Nadal as he enters, customary Babolat in his left hand.
—The two are asked by chair umpire Jake Garner to pose for a photo together before the coin toss. This is typically done after the toss, but Federer and Nadal come together automatically, and their arms immediately reach for each other’s backs. On the one hand, you might say they’re well versed in this, from many matches and exhibitions over the years. On the other hand, they act a little like family.
—Early on, the audience backs Federer. He plays like he hears them. The Federer Flurry is turning into a tradition here. He opened with three quick and brilliant games in his last match, against del Potro, and he does something similar now. The first few points—good serve, easy forehand winner—look a lot like the points he played against Nadal in London two months ago. Federer puts a stamp on the start of this match with a crosscourt backhand winner hit from a deep knee bend.
Asked about this period of the match, Nadal says later, “It’s impossible [for me] to rise that high.”
—As in the del Potro match, though, Federer’s flurry doesn’t stick to the ground. At 4-2, he serves and volleys twice and loses the points. For the match, he goes 35 of 57 from the net. Nadal’s topspin passes are uniquely heavy, but Federer’s forays forward lack conviction, the aggressive footwork and predatory mindset that dyed-in-the-wool net-rushers have. Pat Rafter is doing sideline commentary; he had that mindset like few others.
—The first tiebreaker is nervy. Nadal nets an easy forehand he wouldn’t miss against anyone else. Federer makes an ill-advised challenge on a Rafa serve he probably wouldn’t make in any other situation. Nadal ends it with a backhand over the baseline. Shades of the Djokovic matches from last year.
—But Nadal isn’t playing Djokovic. Everything swings in the second game of the second set, when he 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. "He's not going to . . . He's not going to get . . . He's not going to get that . . . He just got that."
—Nadal’s serve: He’s developed a trump card against Federer. He hits it to his backhand side just enough that virtually every time he goes to the forehand, Federer is fooled and Nadal wins the point. The trick is, Nadal must not increase the number of times he goes to the forehand, or the element of surprise will slowly be lost. Down break point near the end of the all-important second set, he goes to the forehand. It’s an ace.
—Why does Federer miss shots against Nadal that he doesn’t miss against other players? 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 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 the match progresses, and it doesn't work.
—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 his 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 to serve at 6-5. Federer has won his two 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.
—The match reaches a peak of quality in the middle of the fourth set. Nadal is getting better, running wide, using that curling forehand he loves so much down here, and even firing his crosscourt backhand for winners. Federer, looking weary, is getting desperate—he's hanging on and hanging in. But Rafa has a strange weakness that has prolonged many of his matches in the past: Second serve returns when he has a break point. He typically steps back, runs around to hit a forehand, and then nervously leaves it in the middle of the court. Finally, at 4-4, he lofts one past the service line and gets his break.
—5-4, Nadal serving for the match, break point for Federer. He 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.
—The match ends with a Federer forehand over the baseline. Every one of their Grand Slam matches but one—the 2006 French Open final—has ended with a Federer forehand error. All were long, except the Wimbledon 2008 final, which went into the net. I have no explanation for this, except that maybe by the end of a match Nadal has frustrated Federer so much that he overhits.
—Federer waits longer to come to the interview room than he usually does after a tough loss. He’s calmer because of it, too. There’s no talk of “lucky shots” tonight, just respect for Rafa and a determination to look ahead. Oh, and a reality check. Asked how he keeps his “equilibrium on occasions like this,” Federer shoots back, “I haven’t lost in five months or something. It’s not that bad. Don’t feel too sorry for me.”
—Rafa comes in later. The crowds on the grounds are long gone. He says that he wanted to mix in more shots to Federer’s forehand this time, because he had attacked well with his backhand the last two times they played. Nadal ends his English press conference with his left arm over his face, like someone asleep. He sits hunched, staring forward, waiting for the next set of questions in Spanish. He opens his mouth for a serious yawn.
—On first glance at their head-to-head record, I would rate this as the 8th best of the 27 Nadal-Federer matches.
—The seagulls still whirl around Laver Arena at 1:00 A.M. The clean-up crew is out in full force. On the walk toward the hotel, there are only two people in sight. They’re not talking. Finally, as I walk past and am almost out of hearing range, I hear one of them say, quietly, “Awesome match.”
