PARIS — Martina Navratilova said Roger Federer was “on the other side of the float. I don’t think he’ll ever play the way he did three or four years ago.” She wasn’t alone in her read of The Mighty Federer’s game who, God forbid, hadn’t reached a Slam final in 16 months. Yes, it would be nuts to write off the still-imposing Swiss genius.
Still, there were whispers: time and tennis were catching up. Federer was still mighty good – No. 3 in the world – but he hadn’t won a big tournament since November and, yes, all mortals face decline. Tick tock, the clock clicks for all of us. The FedEx is still a very fine train. But some day it too must become a local? But Federer was tired of all such talk. In Australia, he said wait six months and we will see. And in Paris – sublime and confident, he swept to the semis without losing a set. There, he met the streaking Novak Djokovic in the match of the year, and Roger was regal, stepping up to rewrite the stunning narrative of the past six months as he stopped the Serb’s 43-match win streak and kept him from the No. 1 slot. Now all the Swiss had to do was down the best clay-courter in history and a man who had dominated their stats. Rafa Nadal led 16-8 in their matches; was 10-2 on clay, 4-0 at the French Open and had a 6-2 lead in Slam finals.
But this was not the old dominant Rafa. He lost the Madrid and Rome clay finals to Djokovic, and struggled early at Roland Garros, nearly, going down to John Isner in an epic first-round match. No longer an eager kid, the grind of ATP life and this season’s losses seemed to be getting to him. During the first week, the Spaniard showed signs of being drained, saying that he was almost 25 but feeling like he was 100. Insiders wondered what was up with the bounding bull. He wasn’t hitting deep enough and he was standing too far back. Rafa said, “I have to hit the ball with a little bit more conviction.” Once so confident, we now saw doubt and confusion. The fierce snarl was largely gone.
“I am playing very bad…For me, I am No. 1 for [just] one more week.”
Asked if he was confident, he said, “Confident about what?…Win this tournament again? No, seriously, I am not confident. I am not playing enough well. I won… five times already here. I don't have an obligation to win six. I going to try for sure, but…”
So maybe it wasn’t that shocking that Federer came out of the gate fast. Aggressive, swinging free, serving with authority and drawing Rafa in with slices, he broke early and was up 5-2 when a delicate drop shop missed the line by a hair. “He had a short forehand,” Jim Courier explained. “But he miss-hit it and had to hit a drop shot. If he hits the forehand the right way, he wins the point outright. But he didn’t and the serving got more complicated and he didn’t make a first serve. The pressure was mounting.”
And the Spanish bull charged. No longer on his back foot, serving to Federer’s backhand and starting to dictate with his punishing forehand, his simple but effective game plan kicked in. Pound to Roger’s backhand, open the court, then blast a winner. In a match of stunning momentum swings, the Spaniard raised his level and calmed the Fed storm. He won five straight games, collected the opening set 7-5 and scored a break in the second.
Spanish flags rose high, Federer’s head fell. “Could the matching be slipping away,” many wondered. Nadal had three break points to go up 4-1. But Federer showed resolve, served beautifully, held serve and won some monster corner to corner rallies and broke back to even the match at 4-4. Tennis at it’s best, a sheer treat. But then, as was the roller coaster pattern of the day continued, Federer (after struggling so hard to come back) suffered a lapse. Playing a loose game, he was quickly broken back and was about to lose the second set when a brief downpour hit. The break gave the Swiss just the brief breather he needed. He broke back and forced a tiebreak. But Rafa dug in and bullied his way to win the tiebreak, 7-3.
Now Fed faced the near impossible chore of coming back from two sets down against the King of Clay, who raced to a 4-2 lead. Thinking of when he came from two sets down against Rafa in Miami, Fed again got in touch with his inner genius – unleashing backhands, flat or with spin, ripping forehands, deft drop shots, sliding passing shots. “I wasn't just going for broke,” said Federer. “I was trying to make the plays and moving him around, make him tired, and frustrating him with quick play sometimes. Mixing it up. That's what I always do, and he does his things…I think he's happy to be Rafa; I'm happy to be Roger.” And when Roger scored a third set win to force a fourth set the Court Centrale throng exploded with glee. Roger then rolled on, going up 40-0 in the first game of the fourth set. But he couldn’t deliver a key overhead winner against Nadal, who with Djokovic is the best defensive player in the universe. This was Fed’s great opportunity, but he couldn’t grasp it. And on this surface Fed has to play every hand right.
Not surprisingly, Nadal quickly put his foot down to the throttle, took total control and blasted his way through the fourth set to score a 7-5, 7-6, 5-7, 6-1. Where did Federer go? Courier said Roger had to be more aggressive on his forehand. Coach Toni Nadal suggested Federer was mentally spent, that the match-up is good for his man and that in the 2007 French final Federer swept to a first set win then vanished and the same thing happened in the 2009 Aussie Open final.
For his part, Federer contended, “It's always me who's going to dictate play and decide how the outcome is going to be. If I play well, I will most likely win…If I'm not playing so well, that's when he wins. So it's always pretty straightforward when we play each other.”
But in the end, Rafa wasn’t straightforward. He was down on the sticky clay celebrating his tenth Slam and “Borg-tying” sixth French Open. Asked to compare his record to Federer’s and his dominance of the best player of all-time, Nadal said with typical modesty, “it means I can play well as well. It means that things went well when we played… But this does not prevent anything else. And when you talk about these statistics, when you make these comparisons, really it's not very interesting to me. I'm very happy with what I have, with who I am. I'm not the best player in the history of tennis. I think I'm amongst the best. That's true. That's enough for me …I'm very thankful for everything that's happened to me up until today. I can't say that the opposite. Now I need to continue working and do everything I have to do from a mental and physical standpoint.”
But did his fabulous win now make the man who felt like he was 100 years old a week actually feel maybe younger than 25. “No,” Rafa told IT. “I feel 25. I am happy with 25. I don't want to go back four or three years, because I don't know if I am ready to do what I did another time.”
