Nadal's Third

Having watched yesterday's Roland Garros final, I think I can shore up some of the technical speculation I engaged in yesterday.

•Nadal is a more devastating, if less elegant, champion on clay than Kuerten, the last guy to win three French Opens in a row. Kuerten was, as has been copiously noted, all samba and sinuous movement; Nadal is a brutalist, the highest expression so far of the Gilbertian "Winning Ugly" strategy. Of course, Nadal is also pretty smart. Take, for example...

•...his restrained serving performance. Whether he planned this beforehand, or simply reacted to Federer's poor serving, is up for debate, but he definitely recognized that a high first-serve percentage on his side, versus a low one on Fed's side, would help him to, as it were, stay ahead in the count. This established a framework in which he could play patiently, albeit very physically, and force Federer to take too many chances.

•Federer seems to be caught between serving philosophies, in addition to perhaps suffering from technical flaws (see below). My own theory is that, having lost to Kuerten in a previous year, failing to make the French final, he has patterned his big-time clay court game after the supple, but now sadly departed, Brazilian's. Kuerten's shots lacked Fed's "crispness," but he did manage his play on the dirt in a similar fashion. But interestingly, Kuerten, in his French victories, served bigger than Federer and rarely missed a chance to end a point at net. So maybe Fed needs to review the tapes...

•Hitting a winner on clay, especially slow red clay, is difficult. This might explain why Federer whacked so many seemingly easy balls into the tape, off his forehand side. Normally, he gives himself more margin for error on winners than anyone I've ever seen. However, all those missed forehands in the first set could likely be chalked up to overhitting in a vain effort to flatten out the hit and strike decisive winners, rather than merely great shots that would demand another swing when Nadal tracked them down and hit them back, as he is wont to do.

•Nadal is currently the only Nike player wearing the clamdiggers, no? I suppose it's a look...

•As stated above, Nadal has a hideously effective game. I think this annoys Federer, who is a purist and an esthete. Has anyone ever looked more regal on court than the stately Swiss? The French, which rewards filthy play, quite literally, compounds Roger's disgust. No wonder he so much prefers beautiful, royalist Wimbledon. He's just the kind of aristocratic dude who would have been forced to flee Paris during the revolutionary Terror, but now cannot flee Paris during his own annual terror on the terre battue. Note, however, that the ugly game, pace Nadal and Roddick, is on the absolute rise; you can count on less than one hand the number of dominant, truly "beautiful" players who have come along in the past 20 years. Right now, only Lubie and Mikhail Youzhny come to mind as exemplars of the style. The rest of the ATP is thuggishly unpleasant to watch in action. Simple reason for all this: If you play pretty, you'd better have some enormous talent to draw on. Otherwise, brutally effective is the way to go. Let's hear it for Brad Gilbert, by far the most influential tennis tactician of all time.

•I don't see Federer's backhand as a significant weakness, on clay, anymore. As was pointed out by a poster on the Tennis Warehouse discussion board, it "never looked better" than in the final. I agree. At one point, McEnroe commented from the NBC booth that Fed wasn't hitting many slice backhands, which was true (and he probably should have been hitting more), but he was striking the topped backhand so dang well that, even in defeat, he seemed to make the decision to stick with it. Of course, He wasn't getting depth and penetration off it, particularly (it was hitting around the service line most of the time), but the stroke wasn't breaking down; it was his serve and forehand that were causing trouble.

•People are overestimating the opportunity that Fed has to attack Nadal by approaching the net. It's worth noting that both Fed and Raffa hit an "exploding" ball, loaded with so much nasty spin that it's extremely difficult to get on top of it and execute a decent controlled approach shot. I think this is why players like Tim Henmann and James Blake have a rough time attacking Federer by coming into net: Their feeble set-up shots give him too many passing-shot options, and his passing shots are outstanding. Turn the tables, and examine Nadal's viciously spun strokes. If Fed wouldn't approach on himself, why would he approach on Nadal?

•In two French finals against Nadal, Fed has won two sets. Nadal has won, obviously, six. At the professional level, that's a walk in the park. Federer is practically spotting Nadal a set every time. So as of 2007, the Number One hasn't seriously threatened the Number Two on this surface, in this venue. Upshot: Fed is going to have to work much, much harder to win a French Open as long as Nadal is around. Doing so, as time marches on, will imperil Fed's chances at Wimbledon, which over the long haul is his only shot at breaking Sampras' Slams record (just as Wimbledon was Pete's only chance at breaking Emerson's record--Wimbledon is just so much easier for a Fed or Pete to win). Maybe Roger looks at tennis history and figures racking up Slams won't have as distinctive and enduring an imapct as capturing a calendar-year Grand Slam, which hasn't been done on the men's side since Laver in 1969. If so, he only has another year or two to pull it off, as I don't think he will be able to hang in there physically for an entire year at age 27 or 28.

•FInally, it was a great victory for Nadal. He genuinely never looked, during the entire tournament, as if he intended to lose, no matter who he came up against. Everyone will remember 2007 as yet another year when the the "Best Player of All Time" didn't win, but what they should remember is that Nadal completely dominated the fortnight and pretty well ruled the likelihood of a Fed victory out from the very first ball he struck.

•That said, I don't expect to see Nadal make the Wimbledon final again. In fact, I think a well-rested Andy Roddick finally has a great shot at his second Slam. Both Fed and Nadal have to fairly weary at this point, and Fed in particular is struggling with some serving issues.