Last year, Rafael Nadal had a “beautiful disaster” losing all three of his round robin matches with nary a set.  This year, he was able to turn it around.  He came into today’s match with a 2-0 lead and playing Tomas Berdych, the man who he beat to win this year’s Wimbledon.

Berdych’s style seems inherently fraught with errors and possibilities.  He plays so smooth, and yet so flat.  Time and again, he’d try a big shot up-the-line, and hit the net.  Berdych simply lacks the shot tolerance to bother Nadal and doesn’t have huge enough shots, in general, to hit winners soon enough to offset that.

Indeed, it was a bit lucky that Berdych managed to stay even with Nadal in the first set.  At the end of the first set, Nadal decided to challenge a deep ball by Berdych.  Umpire Carlos Bernardes agreed it was long just after the challenge so Berdych, upset at how late the call was, challenged and the ball was in by a hair.  He then told Nadal that it was Berdych’s point since Nadal had challenged and stopped the point.  Nadal flew into a rage and yelled at Bernardes for minutes on end.  Had Bernardes done nothing, Nadal would have no point.  He stopped the point, it was in, end of story.

It wasn’t so clear what it meant for Bernardes to agree with Nadal and force Berdych to make the challenge.  Although Nadal was technically there, he did also stop the point.  It made no sense for Bernardes to overrule since Nadal was challenging anyway.

In any case, Nadal won that game, and eventually took and lead in the tiebreak and won that.

This seemed to faze Berdych, as Nadal began to control the points better and Berdych was unable to raise the level of his game anymore.

Final score: Nadal wins 7-6(3), 6-1.

With Nadal’s 3-0 sweep of Group A, Roddick had a chance to win, even at 0-2.  Berdych’s record was 1-2.  If Roddick won in straight sets over Djokovic, then both Roddick and Djokovic would be 1-2.  Then, that one set that Roddick won in his loss to Nadal would play a role in getting him to the semifinals.  There was even some hope, especially with a good head-to-head over Djokovic and a looming Davis Cup that Djokovic desperately wants to win, that Roddick had a good shot.

To be fair, Djokovic plays up and down in a year.  Some of the times, he is hitting the ball very well and he looks like a top 3 player.  Occasionally, his game goes awry because of the heat or allergies or some other reason, and he looks a bit more ordinary.  Roddick had beaten Djokovic when the weather was hot or when he’d met Djokovic at a down time.

Everyone felt Djokovic was striking the ball well, contact lens issues not withstanding, and that Roddick would probably lose to Djokovic, or at least surrender a set which would eliminate Roddick regardless of a win or loss.

It turns out Djokovic had a pretty easy time beating Roddick 6-2, 6-3.

This puts Djokovic in a match against Federer in the evening and Murray in the early match against Nadal in a replay of the Toronto semifinals.

At this point, Federer and Nadal should be considered the favorites, but Djokovic and Murray are playing pretty good, so we’ll see how it turns out.