Why Rafa Crushed Roger
in the French Open 2007

John Yandell

First he chewed up Roger, then took a bite out of the trophy.

So it wasn't that close and the outcome was never really in doubt. Rafa over Roger in 4 sets. Afterwards I spent a long time trying to figure out what the hell happened out there.

If you study the match, the patterns and the statistics are fascinating, and we'll look at all that set by set, including the Aggressive Margins. But my conclusion is that this match was decided by other factors before the players hit the first ball. This is because Nadal tipped the balance in the psychological war.

From the spectator's point of view, and especially from the point of view of Roger's fans, this match was a huge emotional disappointment. Roger seemed strangely aloof about his date with tennis history.

There was that glimmer of hope there at the start of the third set. But even after Roger won the second, it still didn't really feel like he was in the match, or even 100% committed to the effort. Then in the fourth, Rafa crushed any remaining glimmers with his frightening tenacity and superhuman counter punching.

Rafa: frightening, superhuman, crushing.

Selfishly, I wanted Roger to win so I could say I witnessed a major event in tennis history. But emotionally I also really wanted it for Roger, as did almost everyone I know.

You have to love Roger for his game, that gorgeous mixture of power and poetry. But also, as a person, he is just so damn likable. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you catch Murphy Jensen's Tennis Channel piece, where he visits Roger and Mirka in their hotel room.

It's basically wonderful, and that's saying a lot about anything Murphy Jensen is involved with. You get a sense of Roger's personality, his intelligence, his light heartedness, his goofy wit and natural charm.

He jokes about Murphy bringing him flowers, shows him the wear patterns on his shoes ("Don't worry they don't smell"), and makes fun of his obsession with watching tennis on TV--men's or women's--no matter what Mirka wants to watch. You can't help but like the guy because he seems so sincerely humble and, for want of a better word, sweet.

Why did Roger say he'd rather play Novak?

OK, Roger is likeable. But what happened to him out there in that match in Paris? His level was so up and down. Strategically, he tried everything, vacillating almost randomly back and forth between tactics. Nothing was consistent, much less consistently effective. Most surprising though was that Roger just didn't look that emotionally charged up.

Did Roger lose the match? Did Rafa win it? Or was it something a little more complex that had to do with the history of their relationship?

I got a bad feeling about Roger's chances the day before the final when I read the quotes from both players in the New York Times. Both claimed the other one was the favorite, which seemed like the right thing to say. But Roger said one more thing that felt wrong. He said he'd rather be facing Novak Djokovic.

The implication seemed to be that he feared playing Nadal in the French final, despite beating him on clay in Hamburg 6-0 in the third, and then making those confident statements about his chances in Paris after that match. (Click Here)

Now most top players probably fear stepping onto the court with Rafael Nadal. That's easy to understand, the guy breaks opponents into pieces. But to say publicly that you'd rather not be playing him in a Grand Slam final? Especially when you have the Roger Slam at stake, and when a win over Nadal would silence just about everyone talking about greatest this and greatest that?

You'd think Roger would see playing Rafa as a golden opportunity to reverse things against the only real nemesis of his career.

When the match came on Sunday morning and I saw both players in the tunnel, something else happened that seemed bizarre.

The players were coming up the steps to the little platform that leads out to center court. Nadal was leading the way, and got up on the platform first. But before Federer could get up the last step, Nadal stopped, blocking Roger's way, and then just dropped his bag. He could have easily taken another 2 steps to make room for Roger but instead, he stops and drops his bag.

So Roger had to stop behind him on the stairs. And the next thing, Nadal is doing chest kicks and swinging his arms violently around back and forth, doing his famous warm up exercises right there on the landing.

Roger seemed to have adapted to the old antics.

So Roger has to stand there 2 feet below Nadal on the stairs and wait--or step up and risk getting smacked by those huge arms. Roger looked like he wasn't sure what to do and just stood there and pretended to ignore the whole thing. When Rafa finished, he meekly stepped up on the platform and stood behind him.

If that incident seems like a small thing, I don't think it was. Whether it was completely consciously calculated or not, the point was to intimidate Roger, and I think it worked. Nadal dominated the platform, then he went out and dominated the match.

There is no doubt that in the past Rafa has annoyed Roger with his pre-match jumping and sprinting, but as I wrote after the Hamburg match, I think Roger had adjusted to that tactic in the last year. But this episode took it to a new level. And don't think these things don't go on between players, because they do, all the time.

And as uncertain as Roger looked on that landing, it paralleled how he played. He just never got his attacking game rolling for more than a point or two at a time, and you really never had the feeling that he was willing to fight it out to the death playing defense either. What I think we saw in Roger's demeanor wasn't lack of desire, it was lack of confidence.

First Set

The first three games were tight, with both players holding. Then with Nadal serving at 1-2, there was a sudden flash from Roger. He hit a gorgeous, overpowering inside out forehand return. He backed that up with a dominating backhand return. Then he crushed an overhead to get to double break point, and the crowd let out a small roar.

At that point I'm thinking I would love to be wrong and that maybe we'd see Roger take attacking tennis to a new level, and win this match with shotmaking against Rafael Nadal on red clay. But Roger couldn't come close to sustaining it. Not in that game and not in the match. It was just a flash, and, unfortunately that seemed to set the pattern for the whole day.

At 15-40, they played a long backcourt point with Roger getting slightly ahead. But instead of going inside in up the line on one more forehand--the tactic that seemed to work in Hamburg--he went inside out, and it was probably one ball too soon. Nadal retrieved it, neutralized the advantage, and eventually won the point on a backhand error from Roger.

Nadal then ran off the next 4 points in a row to escape and hold. All four were backcourt points with Nadal hitting those monster, high bouncing drives. Two points ended with Nadal winners. Two points ended with Federer errors. The errors seemed to happen almost unexpectedly, like they stemmed purely from frustration. And again that started a pattern.

With Nadal serving at 2-3, they played a second key game. Roger had another huge chance for an early break as Nadal went down 0-30, and then 15-40, making a couple of forehand unforced errors followed by a Federer backhand passing shot.

But Nadal hit a couple of great serves to get back to deuce. They had another deuce and Federer played one of the best transition attacking points you could imagine on clay. He got well up inside the baseline, took the ball early, hit inside out, inside in, and then approached down the line off his forehand and finished it with a gorgeous angled backhand volley.

It was another flash of attacking genius, his third break point in the game, and his fifth overall, still early in the first. I saw his mom getting emotional in the stands, standing up and clapping intensely--something I don't ever remember seeing before in any of his matches.

On the break point, Roger started the point using the pattern he established in Hamburg, hitting a forehand return inside in and then a backhand down the line. Then, when Nadal hit a backhand crosscourt, Roger hit a forehand down the line. Nadal responded with a short angled crosscourt forehand.

Roger tried to run around it, but it was a tough ball to get around. He made it, barely, and had the open court, but the shot looked rushed and he hit it three feet wide into the alley.

I thought that was the biggest point of the match so far, a critical chance gone. But then, amazingly, Roger got two more break points. On the first he missed a relatively easy forehand return on a second serve. On the second one, he went crosscourt with his backhand early and gave Nadal an easy short ball that he punished for a forehand winner up the line.

Then Nadal hit two unreturnable first serves and suddenly it was 3-3. An exhausting game physically and mentally, and Roger's 7th break point without converting. The escape had to be a huge emotional positive for Nadal.

In his next serving game Roger had a major collapse. He made three bad backhand errors and then missed another inside out forehand to the open court. Nadal had been on the verge of being broken himself for the whole set. Now suddenly Federer handed him the first break.

But as they started the next game, it looked like Federer just might recovery and break back. Nadal made two quick unforced errors. Then Federer hit a gorgeous crosscourt backhand winner off a low Nadal slice. Triple break point. But again Roger just could not finish. Instead he basically gave the game back.

Nadal hit a service winner. Then Roger made a forehand error, a backhand error, another forehand error, and a backhand return error, none on especially difficult balls.

So after having had 10 break points, Roger had to serve at 3-5. He immediately made another forehand error. Nadal knocked off a short forehand. Roger hit two good first serves to get to 30 all, but then missed a forehand. At set point Rafa got on top of him early in the point and finished it with a quick forehand winner. That was the first set: Nadal, 6-3.

After the set, Johnny Mac and Mary Carillo were calling it a "terrible" set for Federer. If you look at the Aggressive Margin, you can see that there was some truth to that. We've spent a lot of time looking at this key statistic, which unfortunately, isn't part of the match charting done by the event or television. It's too bad because the Aggressive Margin gives you one number that pretty much explains the set.

Supernatural defense and key winners.

A player's Aggressive Margin is winners plus forced errors, less unforced errors. It shows whether a player has won mostly through positive or negative play. (Click Here to read a detailed explanation.) On fast courts the number can be +20/set for great pro matches. Obviously on clay it's usually going to be lower, with +10/set being a very high level.

For the first set, Roger was -6. Not great for sure. But Rafa wasn't all that much better at -1. Not surprisingly, the difference was more errors off the ground by Roger. He made 21, equally divided between forehand and backhand. But Nadal made 15 backcourt errors himself, again half on each side.

One of the other interesting statistics you find when you chart matches is that the player who wins the most overall points wins 95% of all matches.

At 3 all in the first set, Roger might have felt as of his chances had slipped away with all those missed break points. The reality was at 3-3 Roger had actually won more total points: 26 points for Federer versus 22 for Nadal.

And even though Nadal got the next three games, he didn't really raise his level of play. It was more that Roger's went down. This seemed to be based on just his frustration at losing all those break points.

The reality was if Roger had just been able to maintain his level of fight, even with all the inconsistency and back and forth, anything could have happened, and a tiebreaker would have been possible or even likely.

Second Set

Federer looked casual, almost disinterested in the first couple of games of the second set, and immediately got down a break point serving at 1-2. But he ended up having one of those brief explosions and getting out that game with an ace and a huge backhand.

It reminded me of the 1-2 game in the second set in Hamburg, where his whole demeanor changed and he was able to turn things around. Sure enough at 3-3, he finally capitalized on a his 11th break point opportunity, winning two points at the net and hitting a fluid inside out forehand that Rafa couldn't get back.

But winning the set still wasn't easy. In the next game, serving at 4-3 he got down three break points. The second break point I thought was particularly interesting. At 30-40 Roger missed his first serve, but then hit an astounding kick second serve that looked like it was headed east to the German border.

Only Rafael Nadal could have gotten this one back. He was probably 18 or 20 feet behind the baseline and 3 or 4 feet outside the alley when he hit it--and the contact point was still at shoulder level. He got it back short and crosscourt, but Roger hit a short slice backhand down the line that even Nadal couldn't run down.

After two more tough deuces, Roger finally got out of the game. On game point, he hit another kick serve, this time on the first serve, and it was almost as monstrous as the first one. And he again won the point on the next ball by hitting an easy short slice backhand down the line. Those were probably two of the easiest points he won the whole match.

The next game on Rafa's serve had 6 deuces, and Roger had 4 set points. It was the longest game of the match with some really tough points, including some bad errors and amazing shots by both players. Among them was an incredible sliced, short angled crosscourt backhand that Federer hit like a laser beam for a clean winner.

So that was three key points in the only set he won that were decided with low angled slices. Federer hit a few other effective slices in the rallies in the second as well. In the first, I'm not sure he even hit a slice.

Nadal eventually held. But at 5-4 Roger was able to serve it out without too much problem. But I think the effort Roger expended in that 5-3 game had a deep emotional cost. You could see the pain on his face after a couple of Nadal winners. It was like Roger couldn't believe--or didn't want to believe--that Nadal could keep doing what he was doing over and over and over. But you know what? He could.

So what did the numbers look like in the second? The difference was all Roger. Rafa played about the same as in the first set, going from -1 to +1. But Roger went from -6 to +8, a huge turn around. His unforced errors off the ground stayed about the same. The difference was he hit more groundstroke winners, and made a couple more points at the net.

Third Set

So it was one set all, the numbers were heading in the right direction, and I was hoping that maybe Roger could really get rolling for more than a shot or two at a time. I was hoping, but not really thinking that it would.

With Nadal serving at 15-0 in the first game, Roger hit a gorgeous forehand inside out return on a second serve that Nadal couldn't handle.

On the next point he got another second serve and again ran around it and hit a forcing inside out return, then a deep backhand down the line, which produced a short ball. But with the court open, Roger hit a forehand approach inside in. Nadal seemed startled to see the ball come right back to him and hit an easy crosscourt pass.

That pumped Rafa up and he eventually held. Then he immediately broke Roger. Roger missed a wild forehand and got passed after reflexing a volley off the net cord. Then Nadal hit a clean forehand winner up the line that Roger didn't really try for. Roger made a questionable approach and couldn't handle a low backhand volley.

Boom, it was 2-0. Then Nadal held again easily for 3-0. Roger seemed to be trying to play more aggressively, but almost randomly, and he continued to make unforced errors at surprising and inopportune times.

With Nadal serving at 3-1, they played another critical game. Roger hit two forehand winners to get 30 all, and it looked like he really had a chance to break back. They got to deuce and played a long point in which Nadal successfully defended a couple of great Roger forehands.

Then suddenly Roger missed a drop shot badly from around the baseline with the ball actually bouncing first on his side. It was hard to understand why he tried it from there considering where he was in the point.

Then on the ad point for Nadal, Federer got ahead in the rally and hit what seemed like a dominating inside in forehand approach. But Nadal erased it with an impossible short angled sliding backhand passing shot hit from about 15 feet behind the baseline. That was rough. It made it 4-1, and effectively settled the third set.

Federer played two more good services games but that was almost irrelevant, because you felt that Nadal had consolidated the break and there was no way he was going to give it back.

Nadal kicked his numbers up in the third, reaching +13 for the set, which is a really high margin for clay. He hit far more forehand winners and made fewer backcourt errors on both sides. Roger stayed the same at +8. He was even again in the backcourt with a few service and net winners. The numbers matched the feeling of the match. Nadal was starting to pull ahead, and maybe about to pull away.

Fourth Set

Again there were a few tantalizing moments of hope. Roger held serve easily to open. In the next game, he ran down a drop shot and hit a gorgeous clean backhand winner to get to 40 all on Nadal's serve.

One more time, you couldn't help but think, if he could just make a couple of big shots he could break. At that point in the match, a break would have to shift some of the pressure to Nadal, and maybe Rafa would miss a few more balls. And we could get that dream fifth set for the Roger Slam.

And Roger did get to break point. To do it he played a really great, scrambling defensive point, hit a low chip backhand down the line, and then got a forehand error out of Nadal. It was one of the few points where he really looked like he was willing to give everything to win the match. The crowd approved and seemed truly energized for the first time all day. Hard to believe, but this was Roger's 17th break chance.

The next point was probably the longest of the match. Roger tried everything--he hit the backhand down the line and the forehand inside in, he hit forehands to the open court, and he played springy, high energy defense, even hitting a looping, defensive forehand moonball on the run. But 23 balls later, Nadal hit a forehand down the line that didn't come back. That had to feel like a knife sliding directly into the heart.

Rafa had one ad, but Federer got to deuce again on one of the most beautiful backhands down the line you could ever hope to see. But Rafa hit a service winner to get an ad, and Federer dumped yet another second serve return into the net. Another miracle hold for Rafa.

Then Nadal broke Federer in the next game, and that was basically it. Roger kept going for it on his forehand, Nadal kept getting it back, and this led to the same kind of spontaneous weird unforced errors. Roger tried a drop shot and got it over the net this time, but Nadal ran it down and hit an angled winner. Brutal.

The rest of the set was basically routine holds. Finally Nadal served for the match at 5-4. One game to make it 3 titles and 21 matches in a row and stay undefeated at Roland Garros.

Theoretically all Roger needed was a break. But when you looked at the players faces at the start of the game, it was hard to believe that was going to happen. And it didn't. With two forehands and a service winner Rafa got to 40 love and triple match point. One more quick Federer forehand error and it was over.

The numbers were very similar to the third. Roger was +5 and Nadal exactly the same at +15. The feeling was similar too. It didn't matter if Roger hit some good shots in his service games. He just couldn't really threaten Nadal, and was destined to lose, both the set and the match.

Were more volleys really the answer?

So?

So let's get the gratuitous platitudes out of the way. Federer's forehand let him down. Right. He made way too many unforced errors. Right.

He should have stood in and attacked on the returns. Possibly, but he missed a lot of returns from where he was standing.

Roger was wrong to drive all those high backhands and should have hit more slice. Well, the way the slice worked on a few key points, it'd be hard to argue with that one.

He should have come in more. Maybe, but that sure didn't work in the third or fourth sets. For the match he won 21 out of 34 points on net approaches, which is 62%, and that sounds good.

Was the match decided before it started?

But if you look at the third set he won only 3 out of 9 net points, or 33%. That 6 point losing margin at the net was actually the entire point difference in the set. In the fourth it was a little more ambiguous, but he still won only 5 of 11 points, for 45%. The point margin in that final set was 9 points, so the 6 additional points he lost at net accounted for two thirds of the difference there.

And what about that kick serve/slice backhand combo? Ironically those two points were among the easiest looking ones he won on a day when almost every point was a struggle. You have to think just one point like that every service game or so could have made an impact.

But you know what? Unless you are actually Roger Federer, it might be hard to say what you should have, or more importantly, actually could have done differently, given all the circumstances.

And by circumstances I mean the psychological battle that these two guys have been fighting the last two years. I think Rafa got the best of him for sure this time.

When Roger loses belief, you can see it on his face.

It may not have really looked like it through much of the match, but I do truly believe Roger Federer wanted that match with all his heart. I heard from someone that he cried his eyes out in the locker room afterwards.

He didn't want to share those feelings I'm pretty sure, and that's probably why he refused that interview with Bud Collins--although it's easy to see why none of the players enjoy talking to Bud. "Hey Roger, how about answering some nasty questions now that your biggest dream has been crushed in the French final for the second year in a row?"

If you've seen Roger play in person on the rare occasion of a loss, or studied J. Gregory Swendsen's portrait of him from the match he lost to Canas at Indian Wells, (Click Here) you might recognize the look that he had on his face for much of the French final.

Federer really fooled me with that look the first time I saw him play in Indian Wells two years before he ever won a Slam title. He lost to someone pretty good on one of the outside stadiums, and during and after the match, it just looked like he didn't care that much.

Interestingly, his play was similar to the French final--a few brilliant shots, and some bad errors that made you wonder what he was doing. And whether he really cared. Well I guess we all found out he did in the 3 or 4 years after that.

I heard him talk about that once, what he was like as a person when he was coming up, and he made the point that when things didn't go his way, he'd lose belief and when he didn't think he could win, he would play much worse, and make terrible errors.

A few pumps, but were they convincing?

I think this pattern reappeared in the French final. He wanted to win, he thought he could win. But I don't think Roger went into that final truly believing he was going to win. That explains the slip when he said he wished he was playing Djokovic.

To me, this is the emotional and psychological reality behind Elliot Teltscher's concept of Shot Tolerance. (Click Here.) Past a certain point, a player just stops believing he can win a given exchange, and at that moment an unforced error materializes out of nowhere.

Roger isn't overly demonstrative on the court, but when his confidence is flowing there are usually a few key fist pumps and exclamations, maybe a certain tone in his voice, that let you know how he is feeling.

The few pumps in French final didn't have that same feeling. They weren't that convincing. You didn't get the sense that Roger ever thought he was in charge, because, obviously, he wasn't.

With all his wondrous abilities, one thing Roger Federer is not is a grinder. I've heard him use the word with a slightly derogatory tone referring to Nadal.

Federer is a shot maker. People can say what they want about his game plan, his backhand, his forehand errors, his serving percentage--whatever. That's how he plays, and that's how he wins, making big shots, and mostly off the ground.

He likes to hit topspin backhands. That includes backhands when the ball is really high, balls other people think he should slice. But that's apparently not what Roger wants to do. He wants to play his preferred game. And when he can't make his game work, he loses belief.

Roger wants to hit high backhands.

He reaches the breaking point in his shot tolerance and the wild errors seem to come out of nowhere. But they aren't inexplicable really. They're the indirect evidence of Roger's internal state of mind.

Maybe it's like Boris Becker at the U.S. Open, who wanted to prove he could win from the backcourt, and never came in. And only won the Open once when it might have been 2 or 3 or 4 times.

Maybe Roger feels it would be somehow demeaning or a moral or emotional compromise to change his game too much just to beat Rafael, and to hit a lot of super kick serves and low slices just to win the French when really he wants to hit groundstroke winners.

In the press conference I think he pretty much said that without saying it directly: "I couldn't really impose my game like I wanted to, and tried to make the game happen with my forehand. He didn't allow me to do that too well today. So credit to him. And in the end I was just disappointed I couldn't turn it around."

I'm not saying I agree with his decisions or that if he could play a little differently for longer stretches it might not make the difference. But just sitting on the sidelines picking him apart overlooks one fact.

He's human and therefore has personality characteristics and limitations just like the rest of us, and maybe these are things he can't or won't or doesn't want to change or overcome. Maybe if he did, he'd lose something and be a different person, and a different player.

Maybe if he thought only situationallly, he wouldn't believe he was the greatest shotmaker in the game. And maybe he wouldn't be able to win the matches he wins the way he wins them. Consider that trade off for a minute.

Afterwards

And one final thought along those lines. He he may have snubbed Bud Collins, but Roger was gracious as always with Rafa after the match. And still I couldn't help but think back to the incident on that platform.

Even after everything, Roger was gracious at the end.

What if Roger had just stepped right up behind him, blocked Nadal's elbows with his arms or maybe better with his racket bag and then maybe given him a little push out of the way? That doesn't sound at all like Roger though does it?

Again, it goes to the question of who he is as a person--the total package of that. I sincerely doubt he'll ever retaliate in anyway no matter what new psycho-gamesmanship Nadal develops over the course of their rivalry.

I guess the point to remember is that we have been lucky to see them play so many times, even if we didn't get that historic Grand Slam match in the French everyone wanted.

Now don't get me wrong in all this. I still like Rafael, and I am in awe of the way he is able to dominate physically, and also, dominate psychologically.

This guy is a very rough customer and it is going to be tremendously interesting to watch him try to expand his dominance to the other majors. I think he plans to show everyone that the French is just the start. I think he's tired of hearing about Roger's quest for tennis history and is ready for people to start talking about his own.

Does this look like a fun loving teenager to you?

He has this image as a killer on the court, but a fun loving Spanish kid otherwise. OK, sure. But go and watch his post match interview on the Roland Garros site. There's a link there to see it on video. (Click Here) See if he seems fun loving to you after winning his third French. In this interview you'll see that he is starting to take a different tone with media.

He kept that sneering game face going the whole time for one thing, and he gave some sarcastic and dismissive answers--admittedly to the usual stupid questions. It's a taste of what is to come, and we are just beginning to see the breadth of his ambition. That's exciting I think.

And you know what, I'm as guilty as anyone of overlooking Rafa and focusing only on our beloved Roger. Nadal won the French for the third time--that a huge historical accomplishment in and of itself, and would be THE story against almost any other opponent--but here I am writing mainly from the Federer fan's point of view.

So what happens next? Can Roger really get up for Wimbledon after this huge disappointment? I definitely have the feeling Nadal can, and that he will. Anyone want to bet against him now on grass? How about on hard courts at the Open later on? Stay tuned.