Will Rome be a three man race between Canas, Federer and Nadal?
I got all excited there for a moment. I saw Guillermo Canas in the qualifying draw here in Rome and thought to myself, wow, how great would it be if Canas ended up in Roger Federer’s half of the draw? All of a sudden there would be a real possibility that Federer might lose and we’d have a three man race instead of the usual two way race that passes for ATP tennis these days.
Two years ago, Rafael Nadal and Guillermo Coria played an epic five hour match in the final with Coria suffering a heartbreaking loss in the fifth set tiebreaker. Last year, Nadal and Federer played an epic five hour match in the final with Federer losing in the fifth set tiebreaker. Coria lost his confidence after a shoulder injury and hasn’t played this year, Federer was ineffective against Nadal in the Monte Carlo final two weeks ago, and Rome will no longer play best of five matches in its final.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Canas ended up on Rafael Nadal’s side of the draw and now I’ll have to wait until next week in Hamburg or two weeks after that at Roland Garros to get excited again. If you want to beat Nadal, you have to attack the net and rush him otherwise he’ll have time to run around his backhand all day long. Federer is the only clay court player who can do that. Canas has shown that he can beat Federer – he’s beaten him twice this year – but Nadal is beyond his skill set.
Enjoy back to back clay court Masters events while you can, by the way. Hamburg will probably be downgraded by 2009. The ATP is eliminating back to back Masters events and five set finals and using a fifty-six player draw. The smaller draw gives the top eight players a first round bye so they only have to play five matches to win the title. The point of all this is to make life easier for the top players and encourage them to turn up at required tournaments.
Nadal’s Half of the Draw
So far it’s working. All top ten players are present and accounted for in Rome. I had no idea that Djokovic was up to number five. Wasn’t he number ten only a few weeks ago? He beat Richard Gasquet for the title in Estoril this week and looks to be the only player standing in Nadal’s way. Djokovic and Nadal should meet in the quarterfinals.
Andy Murray has yet to show much on clay, Nikolay Davydenko hurt his wrist, and Tommy Robredo could well lose to Canas in the third round since Canas has a 3-1 record over him. If Canas doesn’t wear himself out – he had blisters in Barcelona, an abdominal strain in Estoril and a foot problem in the qualifiers here – we’re likely to see a Canas-Nadal semifinal.
Federer’s Half of the Draw
Richard Gasquet and Tomas Berdych are in Federer’s quarter but Gasquet will lose to Federer before he reaches Berdych. The only interesting match left is Berdych and Ivan Ljubicic in the third round. Berdych reached the semifinals in Monte Carlo and Munich while Ljubicic has one clay court win in Monte Carlo and that’s it. I’m picking Berdych.
The bottom part of Federer’s half is the hopeless quarter. Andy Roddick, James Blake and Dmitry Tursunov don’t threaten anyone on clay and Fernando Gonzalez is sinking fast – he lost in the first round in Monte Carlo and Estoril. It’s so bad that I chose Nicolas Massu to get to the quarterfinal where he should lose easily to David Ferrer.
It will be shocking if Nadal doesn’t win here for the third year in a row.
Picks
Quarterfinalists: Federer. Berdych, Ferrer, Massu, Canas, Agustin Calleri, Djokovic, Nadal
Semifinalists: Federer, Ferrer, Canas, Nadal
Finalists: Federer, Nadal
See also:
Federer-Nadal VI (last year’s Rome final)