On the surface, this was the kind of match you’d give to Rafael Nadal.  Davydenko is the kind of player that generally doesn’t get his due respect.  He doesn’t have a big serve.  He doesn’t have huge shots, at least, not in the conventional way.  He’s never reached a Slam final and often fails to reach the later rounds of Slams.

Earlier this year, Nikolay Davydenko suffered a heel injury that took him off the tour for two months.  Due to missing tournaments, Davydenko eventually fell out of the top 10 for the first time in four years.  Since then, he’s worked hard to get his ranking back solidly in the top ten.

Davydenko played the role of spoiler, eliminating Djokovic in the semifinals, preventing perhaps the most intriguing rivalry in tennis today: Nadal-Djokovic.  Yet, because of the way he played Djokovic, I felt Davydenko would give Nadal a good challenge, and this could be a very interesting final.

Why did I pick Davydenko to win over Nadal?  The main reason was Nadal’s close matches in Shanghai.  Admittedly, players like Ljubicic and Blake are tough players, but neither are playing spectacularly well, and yet Nadal was pushed to three sets with both of them (Ljubicic did retire once they reached the third set, however).

Because Davydenko tends to lose early in Slams, I had seen very little of his play.  I couldn’t quite tell you how he wins matches, since it seems he lacks weapons.  But after watching him play Djokovic and Nadal, I have a much better sense of what makes Davydenko a tough guy to play.

For a while, it seemed the way to beat Nadal was to overpower him which is a tall order.  Gael Monfils tried to bludgeon Nadal at the US Open and found Nadal to be a formidable retriever.  Juan Martin del Potro used straight-ahead power to make Nadal look like a beginner in his semifinal encounter with Nadal.  Marin Cilic took a page from the del Potro book and used a similar hard hitting strategy to take out Nadal in Beijing last week.

The one commonality between del Potro and Cilic is their height.  Both men are a rangy 6’6″.  Their height allows them to serve well and to take the high balls that Nadal feeds in their strike zone.

So how could a guy like Davydenko, only 5’10”, beat Nadal.  In tennis, you can often trade angle for power.  Few players try to trade angles with Nadal.  Federer used to do this, but Nadal’s ability to retrieve made this strategy dangerous, even for Federer, and Federer has avoided this strategy.  If you want to win with angle, like Davydenko, you need to do three things well.  You need to take the ball off the rise well.  You need to be speedy.  You need to hit accurately.

Davydenko is almost a successor to Andre Agassi.  Agassi once said that there were players that hit hard and there were players that hit off the rise, but he was the first player that could do both well.  Of course, he forgot that Connors could also do that.  In a sense, Agassi was a modern Connors.  Great returns, great power, and hitting off the rise.

Davydenko has great control over his shots.  He is very accurate hitting crosscourt angles, and very sharp ones at that.  Few players find the angle to hit a ball repeatedly to the point where the service line meets sideline.  Even when Davydenko is pulled out wide, he can hit that angle in trouble, on both forehands and backhands.  Time and again, Davydenko would hit his wide angled forehand to the Nadal backhand.  Nadal would be forced to hit slice backhands from that angle.

Davydenko took an early break in the first set, but was soon broken back when his forehand was losing control, especially hitting down the line.  The two played tight games to hold serve and push the match into a tiebreak.  Like yesterday, Davydenko took an early lead in the tiebreak and won it handily at 7-3.

As well as Nadal hits, Nadal doesn’t like to take too many chances.  He is a topspinny version of Murray.  He prefers to keep the ball in play and wait for openings.  Rarely do you see Nadal see a shot and just go for it.  He’d prefer to loop another shot back and force you to play another shot.  For many players, this is too tough to handle.  Players like Murray stand as far back from the baseline and have to exchange with less angle because of that distance.

Meanwhile, Davydenko tries to crowd the baseline, and was often taking groundstrokes in no-man’s land, especially on short shots.  Twenty shot rallies were not uncommon in this match.  Davydenko showed you could beat Nadal playing angles and waiting for openings to hit down-the-line shots.  Nadal worked hard getting the balls back in play.

At 5-2 down, Nadal decided to be more aggressive.  Often, Nadal likes to hit a series of inside-in shots up the line.  He did not do much of this because of the Davydenko angle that made such strategy nearly useless.  That aggression finally translated to a 5-3 hold for Nadal.  However, Davydenko came back in the next game to hold.  On match point, Nadal hit a shot very close to the baseline that was called out late, and on replay, the call was upheld and Davydenko had his win.

How was Nadal playing?  Movement-wise, he seemed very good.  Nadal’s generally struggled moving to his left, primarily because he cheats over to his right.  Davydenko repeatedly pushed Nadal wide to his right (his backhand) yet Nadal recovered time and again.  However, Nadal seems a bit passive.  He was basically trading shots with Davydenko, and Davydenko was able to move the ball around a lot more, taking chances with down-the-line shots on both forehand and backhand, where Nadal took fewer chances, which is more in keeping with his style.

Davydenko’s formula for winning is highly unusual in this day and age.  He doesn’t use the inside out shots that much (not like Federer does) and trusts his backhand more.  Because of his precise strokes that never seem to land too close to the lines, Davydenko can make his opponents work.  Perhaps Davydenko’s weakness is dealing with power, which makes Nadal a good opponent for him to play especially on hardcourts.  Davydenko showed that you don’t need pure power to beat Nadal.  If you are quick, and you can take the ball off the rise, you can use angles to make Nadal’s life tough.

Davydenko wins the Shanghai Masters, 7-6(3), 6-3.  And no one retired this match.