{"id":614,"date":"2007-06-11T10:07:52","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T18:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=614"},"modified":"2007-06-11T10:07:52","modified_gmt":"2007-06-11T18:07:52","slug":"breakfast-in-paris-nadal-wins-the-french-open-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/breakfast-in-paris-nadal-wins-the-french-open-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast in Paris: Nadal Wins the French Open Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not Paris exactly. More like Jerry\u2019s Famous Deli in West Hollywood which is adjacent to Beverly Hills, both of which are surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. A group of tennis fanatics who frequent Peter Bodo\u2019s Tennis World<\/a>, a popular blog, got up before sunrise on a Sunday morning and drove to Jerry\u2019s Deli for the 6am broadcast of the French Open men\u2019s final between Roger Federer<\/strong> and Rafael Nadal<\/strong>. Except for European soccer crazies and Formula One fanatics, who else does that?<\/p>\n

Among us we had a former journalist who\u2019d seen McEnroe play Becker in Davis Cup, a sixteen-year-old (here with her mother) who had her picture taken with Nadal, and a resident pro: our organizer Hank Moravec. Hank played qualifying at the U.S. Open when it was on clay at Forest Hills. Now we know why his online handle is Dunlop Maxply.<\/p>\n

A woman named Gloria settled in and immediately requested a three set victory by Nadal so she could celebrate and be on her way. She had things to do. Early on it looked like she\u2019d be disappointed. Federer had three break points on Nadal in the fourth game of the match and an incredible five more in the sixth game but came away empty. Even the mighty Federer couldn\u2019t get over that disappointment. He lost his next service game at love, squandered two more breakpoints, and Nadal had the first set.<\/p>\n

Federer improved his first serve and imposed his forehand on Nadal in the second set and it allowed him to get to the net. He broke Nadal in the middle of the set and that was all he needed to even the match at one set all. Gloria would have to wait.<\/p>\n

But not too long. In the third set, Nadal lifted his game to the point where Federer lost his serve and the set despite an 88% first serve percentage. Nadal\u2019s strategy was clear: send 90% of the balls to Federer\u2019s backhand and that included the serve. Nadal did not hit one first serve down the middle to the ad court.<\/p>\n

Federer\u2019s strategy? He wanted to attack but that was difficult. The ball kicks up higher here in Nadal\u2019s private corner of the red dirt world than it does at Hamburg, the site of Federer\u2019s only victory over Nadal. It\u2019s tough to attack when you\u2019re swatting at flies with your backhand.<\/p>\n

And then there was Hank\u2019s theory and we were off on a live version of the anonymous thread that pops up daily on the Tennis World website. These people know their tennis! According to Hank, Nadal and Guillermo Canas<\/strong> are unique on the tour because they are so defensive that they don\u2019t give Federer anything to work with. Hank started tracking points. When he saw a rare point where Nadal was aggressive and tried to hit corners and angles, he pointed out that those angles gave Federer opportunities to hit offensive shots. It\u2019s much harder to hit winners from the middle of the court after all.<\/p>\n

I wondered how Nadal held serve so effectively with that softy serve and Hank had a good theory for that too. Nadal\u2019s first serve averaged only two miles per hour more than Justine Henin<\/strong>\u2019s serve when she beat Ana Ivanovic<\/strong> in the women’s final on Saturday. Nadal uses spin and location to confuse his opponent but Hank thought that Federer was also being stubborn. Federer mishit so many returns because he was going for too much instead of just getting the ball in play.<\/p>\n

Nadal\u2019s exceptional play continued into the fourth set and he broke Federer one more time. With Nadal serving for the match, the former journalist playfully leaned over and asked whether I thought Nadal\u2019s serve would go to Federer\u2019s backhand. It did, of course, and then the match was over and Nadal had his third straight French Open title. Like many people in the tennis world (except for Gloria), we were sad for Federer but not surprised.<\/p>\n

After a multilingual award ceremony featuring three-time French champion Gustavo Kuerten<\/strong>, we stood around in the middle of Jerry\u2019s Deli trying to figure out if Nadal gets the number one ranking at the end of the year if he wins the ATP Race. Anyone know the answer to that?<\/p>\n

\n

Check out our new myspace<\/a> page and put us in your friends network!<\/strong>
\n
\nSee all of our French Open coverage:<\/strong>
\nFrom Roland Garros: The Women’s Final<\/a>
\nB**tch and Singe Dept: Henin Tops Williams at the French<\/a>
\n<\/a>How Far Will Maria Sharapova Go?
\n<\/a>B**tch And Sing Dept: At the French Open<\/a>
\nSuicide Pools and Richard Gasquet<\/a>
\nB**tch and Sing Dept: Springtime in Paris<\/a>
\nSerena, Roger and Posh Spice
\n<\/a>Familiar Final at the French Open (French Open preview)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not Paris exactly. More like Jerry\u2019s Famous Deli in West Hollywood which is adjacent to Beverly Hills, both of which are surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. A group of tennis fanatics who frequent Peter Bodo\u2019s Tennis World, a popular blog, got up before sunrise on a Sunday morning and drove to Jerry\u2019s Deli […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atp-players","category-atp-tournaments","category-french-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}