Clash of the Titans

The Australian Open is a funny event. Held in January where folks in the US and Europe are in the middle of winter, the Australian Open is held in Melbourne in the blazing sun. More than any of the other Grand Slam events of tennis (the French, Wimbledon, the US Open), the Australian Open (AO, for short) has surprise finalists.

Last year, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga came out of nowhere to reach the final beating Rafael Nadal en route, then the world number 2. The year before, Fernando Gonzalez of Chile made the finals. Players like Rainer Schuettler, Arnaud Clement, Thomas Johannson (who won), Marcos Baghdatis have reached the finals in recent years. If these names don't exactly roll of your tongue, no worries, mate, it's typical of the AO.

Men's tennis is usually a game of the young. The best players often blossom by 18 or 19 if not younger. Boris Becker won Wimbledon at 17. Mats Wilander won the French at 17 too. Pete Sampras won the US Open at 19. Rarely does a player who has been toiling on the tour blossom at 25. The exceptions are maybe someone like James Blake who, at 28, plays as well as he ever has. He's had a slow rise to top 10 and it's more a testament to his physical prowess than anything else.

So how did Fernando Verdasco suddenly play so well at 25? How did he push world number 1 Rafael Nadal, a guy who he had never beaten to 5 scintillating sets?

Although Nadal and Federer are known to be some of the best hitters in the game, it's rarely pointed out how mentally tough they are. Nadal, in particular, rarely has bad patches where he gets impatient and just lashes out. He's a disciplined player. What helps is just how tenacious he is. He continues to fight, to hit great shots, to run down balls that you don't think he will. As Verdasco said in the interview afterwards, Nadal makes you win the point several times.

Both players, however, are mentally tough and it explains why they are numbers 1 and 2 in the world. They rarely have bad lapses, which means they are always competitive.

There are players that hit a ton. Players like Tomas Berdych, who pushed Federer to 5 sets, or Ernests Gulbis, or even Fernando Verdasco. These players often lack in the mental toughness department. They get frustrated or nervous when they get down. They can't sustain a level of excellence it takes to win at the very top.

In principle, that's good for players like Verdasco. Verdasco suffered from several things that prevented him from moving to the top. First, his serve wasn't so good, especially his second serve. Part of that was nerves. He played an awful Davis Cup match that he won. Good that he won. Awful in that he was so nervous, he made lots of bad shots. He was only saved by his opponent playing just as bad.

Second was fitness. Verdasco's generally pretty fit, but to play at the best levels in tennis, you must be able to run all day. It means that today's players are less likely to have the longevity of players from the past where running shots down was not as important to the game as it is today. Almost every top player works very hard on speed and agility drills and fitness to run hours, especially in a tournament as hot as the Australian Open.

Most people felt, for a variety of reasons, that Nadal would win over Verdasco. The reasons were simple. Nadal had never lost to Verdasco. Nadal had had easy wins up to this point. Some felt Verdasco was just a weaker version of Nadal and Nadal simply did everything better.

I, however, did not think that. First, Verdasco's serve looked good against Murray and Tsonga, his two previous opponents prior to playing Nadal. The serve is key. With it, you win cheap points. Nadal returns well, but you can never underestimate getting a few free points off serve.

Second, Verdasco hits pretty hard. He ran both Murray and Tsonga ragged with his power hitting. Indeed, once he played Nadal, he hit nearly 100 winners in the match. That power works, even against Nadal. I felt his pace would help out.

Third, he beat Tsonga. It's one thing to upset a top player like Andy Murray. The great Roger Federer beat Pete Sampras in an early round at Wimbledon only to lose to Tim Henman in the next round. Time and again, a top player is upset by a lower ranked player and that lower ranked player bows out meekly to his next opponent.

This didn't happen to Verdasco. If anything, he looked more impressive against Tsonga, who was laboring in the heat and humidity to keep up with Verdasco.

It turned out to be more than correct. Verdasco opened up with a first set win in a tiebreak where he took an early lead. Basically, neither player had a whiff of a break point.

In the second set, Nadal had one break to win 6-4, and people felt, well, Nadal's going to roll. Indeed, Nadal broke Verdasco. But Verdasco broke back at love. Then Nadal broke again. And here's the surprise. Verdasco broke back again. They stayed even til the tiebreak where Verdasco made a few errors and Nadal took the tiebreak.

With a two sets to one lead, conventional wisdom says the better player would then take over and win the fourth set, often easily. The weaker player generally concedes he's given the best he's got, so that is that. The better player gains confidence, begins to hit more freely.

Except things didn't go as planned. The fourth set, which I saw none of, went to a tiebreak and Verdasco took that set rather unexpectedly.

In the fifth set, Nadal served first. Normally, this is an advantage. It means, once you get close to the end of the set, that a break by the player serving first automatically wins the set. A break by the trailing player means the leading player still has a chance to break back and tie.

Verdasco struggled to hold serve to 4-all. After ekeing out that win, he reached 0-30 on Nadal's serve and even got a look at a second serve which he promptly dumped into the net. 3 points later and Nadal had held serve and it was 5-4.

At this point, Verdasco serves and gets to 0-40 after some errors and a double fault. He then plays two aggressive points at net to get to 30-40. He misses the first serve, then, the second serve, well, it goes short. People said he choked. He served four double faults the entire match, two in the final game, and one at match point.

Will Verdasco take this victory as a stepping stone to a better future? Only time will tell. His game and mental resolve seem much better and if he can continue to play like this, he can be a solid top ten player.

Not bad for a guy of 25.