Judging by the comments from the two protagonists yesterday, the 23rd meeting between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer seems set to inaugurate a third stage in their rivalry. Call it the emeritus stage, or the sunset stage: After helping each other with dual charity exhibitions this winter, the two seem friendlier than ever.
“I think we had some good times in the past,” Federer said, “and they’ve changed the rivalry into what it is today. Really respectful and helping each other for good causes. We’ve done so many things together. It’s been a lot of fun.”
“It’s special always to play against him and have these matches,” Nadal said.
They didn’t always look forward to each of their face-offs with this kind of historical perspective. Federer admitted yesterday that he had struggled to accept that it really was a “rivalry” at first (let's call this Stage I—the formative days). And I can remember Nadal saying, two years ago at Indian Wells, after Andy Murray had beaten Federer in the semis to spoil a Fedal final, that it was nice not to play Roger sometimes, because it was hard to have to face the same guy so often in big finals. At that point, they were coming off two Grand Slam epics, Wimbledon 2008 and the Australian Open 2009, and you could see where one might have wanted a break from the other. (Stage II—the fierce years.)
That’s no longer the case. Nadal and Federer haven’t played a Slam final since that 09 Aussie Open, and the days, as in 2006, when they contested two clay Masters finals, the French Open final, and the Wimbledon final in the space of two months are over. In those years, they were battling to take a piece of each other’s turf—Nadal was striving for Wimbledon; Federer for the French (it was that striving that really made the rivalry what it was). Each succeeded, each has completed a career Slam, each has filled every hole in their resumes. There’s less on the line now. The surest sign that things have changed: This will be the first time, in a single-elimination tournament, that they've played in anything other than the final since the 2005 French Open.
Still, “less on the line” doesn’t mean “nothing.” Once these guys walk on the court at Crandon Park, the past will be relegated to the past. As far as the present, Nadal and Federer are both still looking to get their teeth into the 2011 season. Nadal hasn’t won a tournament, and Federer has lost three times to Novak Djokovic and fallen to No. 3 in the rankings. At the moment, this is a battle for who's going to stay closer to the Serb in the seasonal race for No. 1, and, more than likely, who’s going to get another shot at him in the final. There are stakes. Nadal wants to assert his No. 1 status and build confidence for the heart of the season; Federer wants, among other things, to make the storyline about his resurgence again, as it was at the end of 2010, rather than his decline.
That 2010 storyline peaked with his win over Nadal in the final in London. Can he repeat that three-set triumph here? It’s a different type of court in Key Biscayne, slower and with a higher bounce. But Federer has won on this surface before, and while he has characterized them as almost like clay, slow courts are hardly a new phenomenon. In 2006, the last time he won here, I wrote a piece about how slowing down hard courts and firming up Wimbledon’s grass, two trends that had begun at the start of the decade, had helped develop a new breed of slow-court player. I used Nikolay Davydenko and Marcos Baghdatis as examples then, but it would be Djokovic who most fully embody that trend. Still, while Federer hasn’t won in Key Biscayne since ’06, and while the high bounce should theoretically favor Nadal, the courts have been no kinder to Spaniard over the years. This is one of the very few big events that he's never won.
