Roger Federer rolls back the years with Rafa rout
By Christopher Clarey
The match point does not always sum up the match, but it did on Wednesday.
Rafael Nadal, desperately trying to hold off Roger Federer, went for an old standby: a left-handed serve high to the backhand.
But the old ways no longer seem to work against this refreshed version of Federer. Where once Federer might have chipped the return and embarked on a rally, he stuck with his new game plan instead: ripping a backhand return full force.
It landed in the corner. Nadal stared at it for a moment or two, pursed his lips, raised both eyebrows (not just one) and trotted to the net, thoroughly resigned to his fate.
In the Australian Open final in January, Federer needed to rally from a 3-1 deficit in the fifth set to win the title. But in this fourth round match of the BNP Paribas Open, Federer's 6-2, 6-3 victory required just 68 minutes as he smacked backhand winners from all sections of the court with the sort of aplomb and precision that were once too often lacking in matches against Nadal, his friendly archrival.
"In Australia, it was a very close match; I had good chances to win," Nadal said. "Today, not. Today, he played better than me. I didn't play my best match, and he played well. And these kind of matches, when you are not playing your best, it's impossible to win."
Federer's lopsided victory was not the biggest tennis news of the day in Indian Wells. That came from the fourth-round match that preceded it, in which Nick Kyrgios, a 21-year-old Australian, defeated Novak Djokovic, the No. 2 seed, for the second time in three weeks.
Kyrgios's 6-4, 7-6 (3) victory was a tour de force, brimming with power and precision. And there'll now be a quarterfinal match on Friday between the rising Kyrgios and Federer, who still seems to be gaining altitude against the odds at age 35. "I'm very impressed with him taking out Novak back-to-back weeks on Novak's best surface," Federer said.
Kyrgios explained, "I'm just in a good place mentally."
Still just 21, Kyrgios is a frightening proposition for anyone when he's in harmony with his environment instead of fighting it. And although Kyrgios has showed his volatility many times during his short career, Djokovic, not Kyrgios, was the more unsettled and combustible man on Wednesday as the aces and winners again piled up in Kyrgios's favour.
The result felt less like an upset if you had watched every point of Kyrgios’s quarterfinal match against Djokovic in Acapulco, Mexico, this month. Kyrgios fired 25 aces in that 7-6 (9), 7-5 victory, which was his first match against Djokovic. Kyrgios fired 14 aces on Wednesday and didn’t face a single break point against the man who remains one of the very best returners in tennis, even if he is currently struggling to rediscover the same dominant form that carried him to four consecutive Grand Slam singles titles in 2015 and 2016.
The match point does not always sum up the match, but it did on Wednesday.
Rafael Nadal, desperately trying to hold off Roger Federer, went for an old standby: a left-handed serve high to the backhand.
But the old ways no longer seem to work against this refreshed version of Federer. Where once Federer might have chipped the return and embarked on a rally, he stuck with his new game plan instead: ripping a backhand return full force.
It landed in the corner. Nadal stared at it for a moment or two, pursed his lips, raised both eyebrows (not just one) and trotted to the net, thoroughly resigned to his fate.
In the Australian Open final in January, Federer needed to rally from a 3-1 deficit in the fifth set to win the title. But in this fourth round match of the BNP Paribas Open, Federer's 6-2, 6-3 victory required just 68 minutes as he smacked backhand winners from all sections of the court with the sort of aplomb and precision that were once too often lacking in matches against Nadal, his friendly archrival.
"In Australia, it was a very close match; I had good chances to win," Nadal said. "Today, not. Today, he played better than me. I didn't play my best match, and he played well. And these kind of matches, when you are not playing your best, it's impossible to win."
Federer's lopsided victory was not the biggest tennis news of the day in Indian Wells. That came from the fourth-round match that preceded it, in which Nick Kyrgios, a 21-year-old Australian, defeated Novak Djokovic, the No. 2 seed, for the second time in three weeks.
Kyrgios's 6-4, 7-6 (3) victory was a tour de force, brimming with power and precision. And there'll now be a quarterfinal match on Friday between the rising Kyrgios and Federer, who still seems to be gaining altitude against the odds at age 35. "I'm very impressed with him taking out Novak back-to-back weeks on Novak's best surface," Federer said.
Kyrgios explained, "I'm just in a good place mentally."
Still just 21, Kyrgios is a frightening proposition for anyone when he's in harmony with his environment instead of fighting it. And although Kyrgios has showed his volatility many times during his short career, Djokovic, not Kyrgios, was the more unsettled and combustible man on Wednesday as the aces and winners again piled up in Kyrgios's favour.
The result felt less like an upset if you had watched every point of Kyrgios’s quarterfinal match against Djokovic in Acapulco, Mexico, this month. Kyrgios fired 25 aces in that 7-6 (9), 7-5 victory, which was his first match against Djokovic. Kyrgios fired 14 aces on Wednesday and didn’t face a single break point against the man who remains one of the very best returners in tennis, even if he is currently struggling to rediscover the same dominant form that carried him to four consecutive Grand Slam singles titles in 2015 and 2016.
