Arena Federer/Nadal/Djokovic Era - Now 1/3rd Over

Federer is still the second-best clay court player right now. Who knows how many French Open titles he would have if not for Nadal. I think that privately, one of Federer's favorite career victories was his win over Djokovic in 2011. That final is the only time Federer seemed to have Nadal on the ropes for real (at Roland Garros), and then that shot was out by inches and Nadal crushed all hopes for him after that.

 

Nadal lost his opening first round set against 59th ranked Daniel Brands of Deutschland.

 

As I recall, he had a five set win in an early round of the French Open in 2011, and in checking on wikipedia, that's what happened.

 

kind of ridiculous that berdych would draw monfils in the first round, but what a match.

 

great win for monfils. beating the 5th seed in round 1 means that the draw should open up for him a bit until the quarters. i look for him to make a deep run on his home turf.

 

great match!

 

Federer no doubt doesn't mind seeing Berdych take a hike, though I don't know if they're in the same part of the draw.

 

Nadal is having a rough time once more, at 6-6 in the first set, 4-4 in the tiebreak as I write this.

Edit: Nadal takes the first set, but even the tiebreak was close, at 7-5. It's a long way from any of the times Nadal took Roland Garros without losing a set.

 

I've only seen the sets Nadal has lost so far.

 

Isner gets mocked a bit for having a style of play that forces him into so many endless matches, but I definitely would have liked to see him beat Haas.

 

i admire isner's perseverance, but i'm not a fan of his game at all.

 

hell of a match that Federer just won. goodness.

 

And Tsonga K.O.'s Fed without breaking a sweat. It's great there are three people still in this thing I'd like to see win it: Djokovic, Ferrer, or Tsonga.

A Ferrer-Djokovic final or a Tsonga-Djokovic final. Any one of those would make me extremely happy.

 

i'd love to see tsonga win a major, but i never would have thought he'd have a chance on clay. even though it's his home slam it's always been his worst surface.

 

We have four guys in the semi finals who all rolled over their quarter finals competition in straight sets. I'm looking forward to great matches. Only Djokovic really seemed to get a challenge in the quarters, from Haas in the second and third sets.

Matchups:

Ferrer has not beaten Nadal on clay since 2004.
Djokovic has beaten Nadal only three times on clay, but most recently this year in Monte-Carlo.
Tsonga and Nadal have only had two matchups on clay, and Nadal has won both.
David Ferrer won his only clay match aganist Tsonga in Rome, 2010.
Ferrer has won three out of four clay matches against Djokovic, but lost the most recent matchup in Madrid, 2011.
Djokovic is 2 for 2 in clay matchups with Tsonga, beating him at Roland Garros and in Rome, 2012.

On paper, Djokovic is the only man who has a realistic shot at Nadal, but if he beats Nadal in the semis, he has decent chance of losing to Ferrer, should Ferrer win.

 

it's on the tennis channel. going to the 5th set now, and i have to go to work.

 

watching it at work now. you can watch it online here heels.

 

Tom send me the link!

 

i just posted it!

http://stream.nbcsports.com/tennis/?pid=78&referrer=&ocid=Yahoo&p=ya5nbcs