In beating Federer on Sunday, Nalbandian created a history of sorts, becoming only the second player, after Nadal,to beat Federer in two tournament finals
MUMBAI: “I guess when you beat Nadal and Djokovic back-to-back you come into the final feeling better than ever,” said Roger Federer after his defeat at the hands of Argentine David Nalbandian at the Madrid Masters final on Sunday.
A dignified loser making a good post-match assessment.
But before the start even the top-ranked Swiss would have at best expected some challenge from the Argentine.
Maybe even a tighter match going to the distance but certainly not a meek defeat as was the case. Come to think of the match, there are two ways of analysing that.
First, the usual one that goes by the form book, one that certainly doesn’t look at anything other than Federer winning the title. And even that has a strong basis.
The Swiss has won 40 of the 49 finals he has appeared in since 2004 — his first year of domination.
Moreover, Federer had beaten Nalbandian in eight of their last nine meetings including a 6-4 6-0 win in the semifinal in Madrid last year.
The Argentine, on the other hand, had had a miserable season which saw his ranking slip from the top 10 to 25th in the rankings and had reached just one quarterfinal this season coming into Madrid.
Moreover, he had lost in all three previous Masters Series finals and his career title count is similar to that the Swiss has won this year alone (6).
But the second way of analysing pertains to the more practical aspect. Nalbandian is one of the few players who have a decent record against the Swiss ace (7-8) — at one stage he even led Federer 5-0 in head-to-head meetings — and certainly knows how to beat him.
Moreover, he was the last player to beat the Swiss indoors — in the 2005 Shanghai Masters final.
And the Argentine had defeated Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal back-to-back en route to the title clash.
Now the question is what exactly worked for Nalbandian that despite having a terrible opening set, he could still come back and dominate Federer in the next two? The answer is just one word: Consistency.
After committing every possible error in the opening set, the Argentine did everything right in the next two. He cut down on his errors and forced his opponent into committing some.
There were two things that worked for Nalbandian in particular — the pinpoint cross-courts which caught the Swiss off-guard, and secondly, the big returns down the middle which forced mistakes from Federer’s racket.
