All things considered, Federer played pretty well.  Expected to lose to Nadal, Federer actually broke Nadal a few times, had him in trouble.  Nadal seemed poised to take a stranglehold in the match, but then Fed would break and leave the result in doubt.  It always seems Fed was a bit behind and needed to hit one more great shot to move ahead, and could never quite do it.

In the first set, Federer chose to just hit with Nadal.  None of that fancy slice and drop shot stuff he tried against his earlier opponents.  This happens to nearly everyone.  You end up playing Nadal differently.  Both players had peculiar stats.  They tended to fare better on second serve than first serve.  Nadal, of course, went to his spinny shots to Federer’s backhand, which gave him some issues.

Fed looked like he was trying a new strategy, hitting hard up the center.  He’s learned to build his backhand so he can hit it pretty hard crosscourt, as well as inside-out on returns.  Nadal has also improved his backhand.  He chose to play a bit more offensively against Federer, resulting in more errors.  In the end, both hit nearly the same number of winners and errors.

Nadal took the first set, 6-4 after breaking to get to 5-3 and two more holds leading to 6-4.  In the second set, the two played closer.  Nadal broke right away to 1-0, but then Federer surprisingly broke back to 1-all.  Nadal broke again and lead 4-2.  Fed held to 4-3 and broke to 4-all, and both held to the tiebreak.

In the end, the usual stuff hampered Fed.  Up 4-2, Fed hit a drop shot that clipped the net to 4-3.  Then, in the next three exchanges Fed nets the ball, twice on the backhand, and once on the forehand, to go down 6-4.  Fed then hits a big inside out forehand to get to 6-5, but in the next point, Nadal returns and Fed totally misses the ball, to 7-5.

All in all, Federer did reasonably well.  His first serve percentage was pretty high.  He made a few too many errors and Nadal retrieved amazingly well as usual.  Many of the shots Federer hit would be winners against anyone else.

Despite another loss to Nadal on clay, Federer has to feel that he’s hitting a lot better, and has chances to reach the final.  He can certainly hope that some player like Soderling will knock him out.

Rafa has achieved the rare triple being the first player to win Monte Carlo, Rome, and Madrid.  He’s now the record hold for Masters level tournaments at 18, one ahead of Agassi and two ahead of Federer.

Congrats to Rafa, and now it’s the French Open in a week!