 |
インドネシアの歴史--Roger Federer’s matches against Rafael Nadal are so often duels to the death that a straightforward, straight-sets canter for either one of them seems wrong, somehow. Like watching Germaine Greer cosy up to Hugh Hefner.
But Tuesday’s match bucked the trend of tennis’s greatest rivalry by being thoroughly one-sided. Federer delivered a truly transcendent performance at the O2 Arena. He ousted Nadal in a mere 60 minutes, with the air of a surgeon performing a dissection. The scoreline - 6-3, 6-0 — was less a beating than a landslide.
The debate after the match encompassed Nadal’s lack of sharpness as well as Federer’s supreme ball-striking. The Spaniard admitted last night that he had not practiced at all on Monday because his shoulder was hurting.
But it would be wrong to take credit away from the victor. Anyone who saw Federer torch Tomas Berdych in Paris just under a fortnight ago will know that he is playing some of the silkiest tennis of his life. You only have to ask the man himself, who said “This one ranks extremely high in my career, because it’s against my biggest rival probably”.
The match started in the most misleading manner possible, as Federer delivered a double-fault on the first point. But as soon as his next serve had landed, he was on his way. A sweating, grimacing Nadal managed to stay in the slipstream of the Fed Express for the first 15 minutes, by which point the score had reached 2-2. But then things turned ugly for the Spaniard.
Having served for 3-2, Federer broke to love in the sixth game, clinching the job with the rally of the match — a pulsating exchange in which both players seemed to cover every inch of the O2’s blue rectangle before an exhausted Nadal finally shoved a backhand wide.
The game was still only 20 minutes old, and yet Federer had, in effect, already claimed his match point. Because this was one of those rallies that reveals the true balance of power between the two players — their respective levels of energy, rhythm and self-belief. And it was after that rally that Federer began his rampage, claiming 10 of the last 11 games.
Having finished the job with a forehand drive that Nadal could only slice into the tramlines, Federer swatted a celebratory ball into the crowd and gazed around the Arena with a conqueror’s stare. It felt a little like the moment in Gladiator when Russell Crowe raises his arms to the Colosseum, having swiftly despatched a squadron of heavily armoured enemies, and shouts “Are you not entertained?”
This was the heaviest defeat that Federer has ever inflicted on his great rival, and arguably the most one-sided of their 26 encounters. The other contender for that title is Nadal’s 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 victory in the final of the 2008 French Open, which is hard to compare directly because it was played over the best of five sets.
You might think that Federer would have forgotten the suffering he experienced that day at Roland Garros, given all he has achieved in the game. But the depth of feeling in this seven-year battle shone through when a reporter brought it up last night. “Nobody’s ever going to talk about that moment any more,” replied Federer, with a chilly smile.
“Sometimes it [the match] just derails for you, like it derailed for Rafa today and it did for me at the French Open,” he added. “Next thing you know, you’re facing a debacle.”
This win put Federer through to the semi-finals, and it is hard to see anyone getting close to him if he carries on like this. Indeed, he will surely be hoping to draw Novak Djokovic in the knock-out stages so that he can make amends for the trouble the Serbian has caused him in the last few grand slams — most recently the semi-final of the US Open.
In the other match yesterday, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga defeated Mardy Fish 7-6, 6-1. Fish, who has a dicky hamstring to line up alongside Nadal’s sore shoulder and Andy Murray’s strained groin, cannot now reach the semi-finals unless others start pulling out through injury.
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿