The clash between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal is as much as awaited as any of Pakistan-India matches. Federer beat Nadal this past Sunday to claim his fifth title at the ATP World Tour Finals.
The final score of his victory was 6-3, 3-6 and 6-1 in a very exciting finale.
Federer was under pressure before the start of this match as the Swiss had lost last six of his seven matches to Nadal. When the match started it was all Federer who mostly dominated the game. He won the first set convincingly beating Nadal 6-3 and played
aggressively throughout the first set. The feature of his game was the back hand shots that he played with ease.
The second set was won by Nadal beating Federer 6-3 after he got a break off Federer’s serve. It was the only bad service game which Federer had played in the entire match. Apart from that he outclassed the world number one. The stage was set for a final
set to be played and Federer was again aggressive as he was in the first set. Nadal had no answer to the express serve of Federer and some of the massive returns Federer played against Nadal were also worth watching. The Swiss took the third set 6-1 by breaking
the Spaniard twice and thus claiming his fifth ATP World Tour Finals title. This victory helped Federer to equal the record of Ivan Lendl and Pete Sampras who were the only two players to have claimed the ATP world tour finals five times.
The rivalry between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer is easily the biggest of all ever seen in the history of Tennis. Both these players have met each other a record seven times in the grand slam finals and a total of 17 tournament finals out of the 22 times
they played against each other.
Although Nadal has a lead of 14-8 over Federer, the Spaniard has won 10 times out of those 14 matches on clay which he favours and some claim him to be unbeatable on clay. If the clay matches are put aside, it is Federer who has the better of the Spaniard
by an 8-4 margin. Roger Federer also holds the record of retaining the number one spot for a record 237 weeks and also being the player to win the most number of grand slams.
Nadal will have to prove his fitness and consistency to retain the number one spot for as long as Federer is playing and he will also be keeping an eye on the total number of grand slam wins the Swiss has. Though Federer is four years elder to Nadal, he
still is not finished and is playing top quality tennis. This way Nadal will have to wait for some more years to find out the exact number of record grand slam wins Federer will get as the Swiss has no plans to retire as yet.
Apart from intense on-court rivalry, both the players have a lot of respect for each other and regard each other very highly. Nadal has also refused to compare himself against Federer on many occasions. Whenever these two tennis giants have collided, it’s
been a very healthy competition and there is no animosity amongst both these players who respect one another.
Although both Federer and Nadal have set many records and have faced each other on many occasions, there is still a lot to come from these two. Some records might suggest that Federer is the better of the two while others may give advantage to Nadal but
the fact is that this rivalry is not yet over. There is still a lot to come and Federer will come hard at the Spaniard in the coming year to reclaim his number one spot. On the other hand Nadal will make sure that he can stop the Swiss and prove that he has
the ability to retain his number one spot.
Tags: