Rome Final

Well, I was almost right about the semifinals yesterday. Verdasco was just too tired to play against Ferrer, and that was the big difference in their contest. Ferrer was too solid, but that's not to surprising. It was a tight first set, but Verdasco fell away in the second. Verdasco started strong, getting out to a 5-1 lead in the first set, but he went on to lose the next six games, which is just about as dispiriting as it can get. I don't know if either player was at their best, with eight total breaks of serve. One of the strongest indicators of Verdasco's physical and mental exhaustion was the way he served. His first serve percentage was almost 75% but he won only 56% of his first serve points. That's the way he served before 2009, when he worked on his fitness and drastically improved the power behind his serve. That was what pushed him into the top ten, but when he gets exhausted, it's no shock that he goes back to his old style. A spectacular couple of weeks for "Hot Sauce" and I hope he recovers in time for the next Masters event and the French Open.

The other match, though, didn't go quite as I predicted. Even though the end result was the one that I expected, Ernests Gulbis played really strong tennis for the majority of the match, and Nadal's level was the lowest it had been since the beginning of the clay season. These two facts may have been related. In any case, this was a great match - one of the best ones on clay yet this year. Nadal broke twice, in the first game of the match and the last one. In both, Gulbis was a bit mentally unsteady. He came out shaky on serve, and in the last game he clearly felt the pressure of serving to stay in the match, and as a result he rushed himself.

Aside from those two games, Gulbis served brilliantly. He hit 14 aces, got 77% of his first serves in, and won 73% of those points. He was smacking his forehand from every part of the court, and he was keeping Nadal pinned back so far that it allowed to hit some great drop shot winners. Unfortunately, he misfired on three in the last two games, which ended up costing him the match. Up until 4-5 in the third set, Gulbis had won two more points than Nadal over the course of the match. Now, all credit to Gulbis for playing the kind of tennis that can trouble Nadal, but he wasn't at his best. Nadal knew he was not up to his usual level, but he's a perfectionist. Still, even Gulbis said that he was expecting a higher level from Nadal. Particularly after a loss, that's not something a player usually says about his opponent. We all know that Nadal could have played better, but a win is a win.

Even if he plays only as well as he did against Gulbis, Nadal should win against Ferrer in the final. But I don't think he'll be quite as subdued in his level of play tomorrow. First of all, Ferrer lacks the firepower that Gulbis does, and Nadal has much more trouble dealing with good attack than he does with good defense, which is mostly what Ferrer has to offer. The only chance that Ferrer has if that Nadal's performance today was not a minor dip, but rather an indication of some more serious problem. I don't think that's terribly likely.