Federer: Nadal will be tough to topple

Federer has arrived in London for the ATP World Tour finals a distant second to the phenomenal Spaniard in the rankings and while his desire still burns as strong as ever he is not expecting a return to the top any time soon.

"Sure, it's going to be challenging," Federer said from a hotel lounge overlooking the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament.

"It's going to be very difficult because Rafa is playing well and I have to defend my points in Australia and he has no points to defend here in London," he added.

"That's why things look very good for him over the next few months."

Federer, 29, who began the year by winning the Australian Open but subsequently lost the top ranking to Nadal just one week short of equalling the 265 weeks Pete Sampras spent as number one, has not ruled out the possibility altogether though.

"Right now the number one ranking is not something I have in my mind," said the 16-times Grand Slam champion.

"My goal is to play well here in London and then prepare well for next season and then hopefully, at some stage, I'll try get it back. If not I'll focus on winning tournaments because I enjoy doing that too."

Federer has won the year-ending showpiece four times and, outside the four grand slams, rates it as a priority each year.

"Right now it's about saving energy, getting ready to play the matches," he said. "I've played four of the last five weeks and my game is right where I want it to be.

"It's the ninth time for me and I know the drill. I feel like I've got one more tournament left in me. My body is not screaming for a vacation quite yet," said Federer.

"This is a huge tournament for me. It is a goal of the season to make it here. I hope I can save my best until last."

Federer is in a group with his French Open conqueror Robin Soderling, Briton Andy Murray and Spaniard David Ferrer, who he plays first on Sunday.

Reuters

http://eurosport.yahoo.com/19112010/58/ … opple.html

03.01.2011

STAN NA DZIEŃ : 03.01.2011 rok
(wiek 24 lata, 7 miesiący)

Roger Federer vs Rafael Nadal
Turnieje/Finały 35/10 - 43/13
(TMS/Finały) 8/2 - 18/6
(TMC/Finały) 2/1 - 0/1
(GS/Finały) 7 - 9/2
Ranking 1 - 1
Ilość tyg jako #1: 110 - 77
Ilość wygranych sezonów (Year End #1): 2 - 2

Wyniki Rogera pochodzą z dnia 08.03.2006 r.

Przypominam, że Rafa spotka się z Fedem 21 grudnia w Zurychu i 22 grudnia w Madrycie w pokazówkach charytatywnych.

Rushing to the Finish Line

There’s a phenomenon in basketball where a team gets behind, scraps hard and expends maximum mental and physical energy catching up, evens the score, and then immediately deflates. It isn’t just that they’ve exhausted themselves physically. The psychology of the game changes as well. There’s no longer a target out in front, urging them on.

Something like that happened to Rafael Nadal today, and it happened in the second point of the third set. He had begun the match, as he had begun the tournament, on the flat side, and his opponent, Roger Federer, had succeeded in changing the usual dynamics of their encounters by nudging him out of the patterns he likes. Nadal forced himself to find some more energy in the second, and his dedication to aggressiveness tilted the rallies back in his favor. The first point of the third went the same way, as Nadal ran Federer along the baseline to go up 0-15. Federer’s early confidence had vanished, and he looked as if were groping for an answer. Getting broken here would extend Nadal’s momentum and begin to make Federer’s first-set performance look like a mirage. Now Nadal had him on the run again in the second point. Rafa moved inside the baseline and lined up for an open down the line backhand. He had the lead in his sights for the first time all day. It must have blinded him, because he caught the ball late and fanned it into the alley. He put his hands to his head in disbelief. Federer held. While Nadal would put together a strong hold of his own in the next game, Federer had evened the scales back up. Nadal’s run was over.

And that’s all it took. Federer began to serve well, as he had in the first set, and he had the confidence on Nadal’s next service game to chip and charge successfully on one point, and then break serve by cracking an aggressive return, a tactic that he had been trying to employ, with various degrees of success, all afternoon. He was, as they say, in full flight from there, and Nadal couldn't turn the tide a second time.

This was a quality match, but not an intense one by Federer-Nadal standards. Points and games went by quickly; it took just 90-some minutes to get through three sets. What can we take from it? As far as the play itself, the most intriguing element was Federer’s determination in the first and third sets not to let Nadal lock his forehand into his backhand and dictate the terms of the rallies. This is as effective as Federer has ever been with his topspin crosscourt backhand against Rafa. Just at the point in the rally when he usually loses control, Federer stepped forward and sent a surprised Nadal scrambling to his left. In the crucial game of the first set, with Nadal serving at 3-4, Federer fended off a ground stroke assault with his backhand, and then broke serve by snapping off a sharp crosscourt backhand angle, an angle that stunned Nadal.

Is the topspin crosscourt backhand the answer for Federer? Notice that Nadal changed things up in the second and had success going wide to Federer’s forehand. Nevertheless, along with the backhand, two other gambits that Federer tried today worked. He won points serving wide to Nadal’s backhand in the deuce court, and his commitment to returning aggressively, while it resulted in a quite a few free points for Nadal, worked when he really needed it. It's a gamble, yes, but one he almost certainly needs to take in the future.

So we end the year exactly where we’ve ended it for the last five seasons. With Nadal and Federer at 1 and 2, and with another big title going to one of them. This event felt more like déjà vu than normal, though. Federer capped a post-U.S. Open stretch where he went 21-2, and looked as sharp as he’s looked over any extended period in the last three years. He seems energized, and more important, more narrowly focused on what wins for him, after a few months with a new coach. There’s a sense of slashing urgency to his game right now, particularly on the return side. While Nadal was able, as he usually is, to throw a wrench in his plans, Federer was simply playing too well all week to be stopped for long, even by Rafa. Maybe it was the lighting or the bright red shirt or his attacking game, but Federer seemed to stand a little taller in London. He’s brushed aside all talk of decline, added a new wrinkle to his match-up with Nadal with his backhand and his return, and made 2011 a two-man race to start. Still, my favorite Federer moment of the tournament came in his semi-rambling and highly excited victory speech. He thanked the ball boys and said that if the players had to pick up their own balls, the matches would go on forever. How does that come to his mind right then? Brilliant and goofy, Federer goes out like the Federer of old.

Nadal, on the other hand, looked weary in his runner-up speech. Weary from winning, I guess; he did a lot of this year. Whatever happened today, 2010 still belonged to him. He lost the final, but it was a characteristic tournament for him—there was a sense of deja vu to his performance as well. In every major event aside from the French Open, Nadal has struggled at first, improved over the course of a couple of years, and finally won it. In Australia, he reached the semis in 2008 before bringing home the trophy in 2009. At Wimbedon, he lost two finals to Federer before winning the third. After semifinal appearances in 2008 and ’09 at the U.S. Open, he struck gold this summer. Nadal had never been to the final of the WTF, and he started this one looking like he never would get to the final of it. Now he has—after his first-set loss to Andy Roddick on Monday, he seemed to will himself to believe that he could. If history tells us anything, we know what will come next for him here.

Nadal also gave us what he usually gives us: a classic, grueling, back-and-forth, emotionally draining match. His semifinal with Andy Murray may have been the best of 2010, and it ended with what was the highlight of the week for me. Nadal was nearly apologetic when he hugged Murray at the end. As Murray walked away to his chair, Nadal gave him one extra pat on the back, with a look of commiseration that his opponent would never see. It was, on a smaller-scale, similar to the arm he threw around Federer’s neck after their 2009 Aussie Open final. Brilliant and empathetic, Nadal went out of that match, and out of the best season of his career, like the Nadal of old.

http://tennisworld.typepad.com/thewrap/ … -line.html

Nadal helping to keep Fed great

I sensed for awhile that the latter half of the year was going to belong to Roger Federer so I'm not surprised that he went on and won the ATP Tour Finals.

He is playing exceptionally well and I am now confident he will be a consistent threat next season, even though I would still at this stage take Rafael Nadal to do better in 2011, unless he suffers injury.

Federer looks very nearly back to his best, I would not say he has rediscovered his absolute top level, but he is close enough to the frightening standard he has produced in the past to worry any player.

There were doubts three or four months whether he could keep up with Nadal but he has answered those questions - so really well done to him - and it is fantastic for tennis to see him back winning big prizes again.

Certainly the introduction of Paul Annacone as his new coach is a factor. Roger was very careful when it came to picking a coach and in Annacone he seems to have found the right man. A new input can make a big difference.

When it came to Federer the big question for me was always motivation, but he has answered that by showing he is still hungry for titles.

He has been overtaken by Rafa in the last year or so - there is no doubt about that - but he is now starting to narrow the gap again, and while I would still have Rafa as the favourite for the Australian Open, Roger is now right behind him. It is great to see the rivalry is back big time.

In my opinion, the main reason why Federer is still playing at such a high level despite the fact that he is now 29-years-old is because he needs to keep working on his game to keep up with Nadal.

If Nadal never existed, I've no doubt that Roger would still be playing tennis but not to the standard we are seeing at the moment because really he wouldn't need to.

Federer would still (and could still) win two or three Grand Slams a year as a gimmie if it wasn't for the challenge of Nadal.

Looking at Andy Murray's tournament - well he had another great match with Nadal but again he lost and there is the worry that Nadal could become a psychological stumbling block for him.

He was saying one or two strange things before the Rafa match. Talking about how tough it would be etc...

The strange thing about Murray is that some of the best tennis I have ever seen him play has been against Nadal but he has still ended up losing.

He has to break the habit of losing to the 'big two' in Grand Slams for it to stop being a problem.

I'm not sure he goes into Grand Slam matches against Rafa believing he can win, I do believe he goes into matches again Roger thinking he can win (he's just not doing it), but I think he still sees Rafa as the man he needs to overcome.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/tennis/si … icle/5139/

Marca: Nadal i Federer sportowcami dekady

W głosowaniu na stronie internetowej dziennika sportowego "Marca" na najlepszego hiszpańskiego sportowca dekady prowadzi Rafael Nadal. Wśród sportowców zagranicznych na czele jest Roger Federer.

W głosowaniu na hiszpańskiego sportowca dekady do poniedziałku wzięło udział ponad 60 tys. osób. Ponad połowa (52,8 procent) uważa, że na tytuł najbardziej zasługuje tenisista Rafael Nadal. Urodzony na Majorce 24-latek jest aktualnie numerem jeden rankingu ATP, a w ostatniej dekadzie dziewięciokrotnie triumfował w turniejach Wielkiego Szlema (pięć razy wygrał French Open, dwa razy US Open, po razie zwyciężył w Australian Open i US Open) i wywalczył złoty medal igrzysk w Pekinie.

Na podium są także koszykarz Los Angeles Lakers Pau Gasol (12,7 procent głosów) oraz kierowca Formuły 1 Fernando Alonso (10,8 procent). Piłkarze Iker Casillas i Xavi Hernandez zajmują odpowiednio czwartą i piątą lokatę (obaj po 7,2 procent, dzieli ich kilkadziesiąt głosów).

W głosowaniu na najlepszego zagranicznego sportowca dekady także prowadzi tenisista - Roger Federer. Szwajcar ma 31,5 procent z oddanych do tej pory niespełna 10 tys. głosów. Na podium są jeszcze motocyklista Valentino Rossi (20,6 procent), a także piłkarz Zinedine Zidane (13,7), którego goni Argentyńczyk Leo Messi (12,5).

http://www.sport.pl/tenis/1,64987,88727 … ekady.html

jaccol55 napisał:

Nadal i Federer będą razem rywalizować w Dausze, Australian Open w Melbourne, Indian Wells, Miami, Madrycie, Rzymie, Rolandzie Garrosie w Rzymie, Montrealu, Cincinnati, US Open w Nowym Jorku, Szanghaju, Paryżu oraz Mastersie w Londynie.

No i chyba autorowi cytowanego artykułu umknął wspólny start w Wimbledonie...

Ostatnio edytowany przez muto (29-12-2010 14:44:58)

Federer: Off the Mat

by Pete Bodo

Q: Do we have a right or good reason to expect another installment in the Roger vs. Rafa rivalry to cap the Australian Open?

A: We certainly do, given the most recent twists and turns in this rivalry for the ages. In fact, we may have more right to expect a showdown between No. 1 Nadal and No. 2 Federer in Melbourne than we ever had before. That's partly because Rafa added to his all-surface expertise (and confidence) considerably when he completed his career Grand Slam at the U.S. Open last September. Although he's won the Australian Open before—with a championship match win over his great rival in 2009—his lack of ultimate success in New York always cast some doubt on his hard court proficiency.

Nadal retired with a right knee injury during his quarterfinal match with Andy Murray in Melbourne last year, which certainly aided Federer's drive to the title (the Swiss handled Murray with ease in the title round). More important, the win represented Federer's 16th Grand Slam title and immediately guaranteed that whatever happened the rest of the year, he could consider 2010 an overall success. When a player tells you that any year in which he wins a major is a huge success, believe him.

But then the wheels came loose, if not entirely off. Federer really struggled through the late winter hard-court season in the U.S., and beyond. More surprising, he often seemed frazzled and frayed, losing matches he was in a position to win. He was lucky to have that Australian Open title in his back pocket; had Nadal triumphed back in Melbourne, Federer's problems would have been magnified, and by the end of Wimbledon (Federer was knocked out there and at Roland Garros a few weeks earlier) he could have been said to be in crisis. It doesn't take much to run a player, even a Federer, off the rails. And given Federer's age, record and depth of experience, it's hard to say how he would have reacted to that set of conditions.

There's no reason to get carried away here; it would be insulting to imagine that somehow a Nadal win in Australia last year would have driven Federer to his competitive knees. But when you look at how Nadal ripped through the subsequent spring and summer, and ended up winning three majors after he had to quit in the first one, you must concede that the bum knee played an enormous role in denying Nadal a chance to become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to perform the ultimate feat in tennis—bagging a calendar-year Grand Slam. Rafa is positioned to accomplish the next best thing in that regard starting next week. If he wins the Australian Open, he will be the first man since Laver to hold all for majors at once.

This is all pure speculation; had Nadal won in Australia and positioned himself to accomplish a calendar-year Grand Slam, the pressure at the final three slams would been of a different sort, and probably a different order of magnitude. Nadal isn't crazy enough to set out to earn a calendar year Grand Slam; nobody is that loopy. But it must occur to him—and to Federer as well—that with their multi-surface skills, the Australian Open takes on special significance, because winning it creates the possibility of a Grand Slam, even if it remains a speck on a horizon littered with massive obstacles. The one thing everyone can be sure of is that if you don't win in Melbourne, you won't accomplish a Grand Slam. Duh!

I raise this issue partly because of something I wrote the other day for ESPN, on how the paradigms in tennis can shift surprisingly swiftly. The emergence of the "Golden Girls" theme in the WTA is one example. A more relevant one is the way nobody really thought that anyone in the Open era had a chance to break Roy Emerson's Grand Slam singles title record. Nobody, at least, until Pete Sampras seemed to declare, "Why not?" Since then, Federer has shattered Sampras's mark of 14 majors. So let me throw it out there—why not a Grand Slam, by Federer or Nadal?

The early portion of this analysis unavoidably cast Federer in a lesser light than he deserves, but let's face it, he was legitimately in trouble—his decision to hire Paul Annacone, the man who shepherded Sampras through his greatest years attests to it, as did his results. And give Federer all the credit in the world for taking a proactive attitude, as well as for taking advantage of his opportunity to take the Australian Open title last year. Depending on how things go this year and for at least one more, that win in Melbourne last year may stand out prominently as a critically important one—the affirmative result that helped keep Federer's confidence and motivation on a simmer despite the rough sledding he would face. It certainly was an achievement that he could turn to for consolation when things went awry. It would not have been fun for Federer, denied in Melbourne, to have to watch Nadal run the table in the three subsequent majors.

There were two main themes to the Federer-Nadal rivalry in 2010. One was the maturation of Nadal as a 12-month contender and dominant force. The other was Federer's late-season surge, as he sloughed off whatever temptation he might have had to hit the reset button. Federer finished strong, avenging his U.S. Open loss to Novak Djokovic (on his home turf at Basel). He nosed in front of his pal Pete Sampras in the career title count with win No. 65 (also in Basel), and later he joined Sampras and Ivan Lendl as the only men who have won the year-end championships five times. That he ended his year at that event with a command performance against his nemesis Nadal (Federer won, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1) only made the triumph more poignant.

Seen from high enough above the smoke and din of the battlefield, 2010 seems like a year when Federer approached the brink of submission to Nadal, but managed to pull his chestnuts out of the fire in time to reassert a general—and for us, marvelous—sense of parity. If he benefitted from Nadal's January injury, he also showed great resilience and competitive courage to finish the way he did. But this is how it's always been with these two. What seems a certain knockout either way tends to bring the seemingly beaten man popping back up off the mat, stung but reinvigorated. We saw it most recently at the ATP World Tour Finals.

Yesterday, I speculated that WTA No. 2 Vera Zvonareva's eye-catching 6-1, 6-0 win over No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki in a Hong Kong exhibition may bear upon the events of the coming weeks in Melbourne. Much the same can be said for Federer's performance last week in Doha, where an ill (as opposed to injured) Nadal swooned and staggered out in the semifinal stage, beaten by the man Federer would crush in the final, Nikolay Davydenko. There are more similarities than differences in the comparison, starting with the most conspicuous one of them all: the No. 2s seem to be doing all they can to seize the high ground as the Australia Open bears down on us. They are ready.

http://blogs.tennis.com/tennisworld/2011/01/tk-4.html

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