No one seems to believe it, but Federer’s having a pretty good year.  Oh, he hasn’t solved Nadal.  Djokovic appears to have passed him by.  But Federer has lost to only 3 people this year.  They are, yes, Nadal and Djokovic, and an old childhood buddy, Jurgen Melzer.

Say what you will, Federer hasn’t had those bizarre losses that has plagued his game in the last two years.

He almost did.  Feliciano Lopez gave Federer all he could handle.  Federer held serve, but breaking serve?  A bit pesky.  It’s one part of his game that he probably wishes were better.  If he were as intimidating on return as his peers, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray, he might still be number 1 and an unassailable number 1 at that.

But it’s the business end of the tournament, and Federer is still around.  He did get a bit of luck playing players that he has had good success again which, frankly, speaking, is nearly everyone.  He had a quick win over Xavier Malisse, and shows he still owns Soderling who has had his own issues regaining form and is just finding it with a good victory over Tsonga.

And now, it’s Nadal.

No one much expects Federer to beat Nadal.  Nadal is hard enough to beat on hard courts, but on clay?  He’s just too tough.  Federer did notch one of his few clay wins over Nadal at Madrid two years ago.  Nadal beat him in last year’s final.  That Federer win did have some gotchas.  The big one was Nadal’s semifinal match against this year’s streaker, Novak Djokovic.  Nadal and Djokovic played an epic marathon.  That was the third of three epic clay court battles between the two with Djokovic having come in second in the first two.

Djokovic had match point in that match, but just as Nadal always does, he played a huge shot and denied Djokovic his victory.

That epic battle left Nadal a bit weary, but even then, Federer nearly couldn’t secure the first set, and needed to battle his own inconsistencies to win.  A shaky victory, at best, but Federer doesn’t complain.  A victory is a victory.

Federer last beat Nadal in the year-end championships in London.  The script was pretty much the same.  This time, it was Andy Murray who pushed Nadal in three sets, and left Nadal weary.  Federer had fast courts with a low bounce, and went in ultra-aggressive mode.  Despite this, Nadal still took the second set, before collapsing in a flurry of hard struck shots in the third.

The clay provides slower, high-bouncing shots, so Federer is expecting a steady diet of loopers to his backhand.  Federer has improved his backhand, but it’s still not enough of a weapon to routinely hurt his opponents.  It’s very hard to attack with shots hit that high up and Federer handles it as well as anyone.  Meanwhile, Nadal’s speed nullifies his other shots.  As Djokovic has also learned, if you can force Federer to hit 2-3-4 shots more than he wants, he’ll eventually (like most players) cough up an error.  Shots that Federer used to hit for winners now comes back.

Does Federer have any new ideas to trot out?  This is where it’s great to see someone like Murray who often does have new ideas he tries out for the first time against Nadal.  Often Federer does what he does, realizing any major change in playing style often leads to a loss.  Witness Roddick who has tried all sorts of things against Federer, and often ended up on the losing end regardless.

Ah, the other semis.

Maybe Murray’s loss wasn’t so horrendous.  Murray has a habit of losing to players that are actually playing pretty good.  No, no, not Alex Bogomolov or Donald Young, but losses like the first round loss in 2008 to Tsonga, or the loss to Verdasco in the quarters of the Australian Open.  Murray had a quick exit against Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci, a solid clay courter, but Bellucci continued his winning ways upsetting another Tomas, namely Tomas Berdych.

That leaves the unexpected semifinals between Djokovic and Bellucci.  The two have met once, back in Rome last year, with Djokovic securing the win.

Djokovic just passed Lendl on the consecutive wins since the start of the year.  John McEnroe is ahead of him, but he skipped the Australian Open to achieve that streak.  Borg apparently had a 33 match winning streak, but it didn’t include the Australian Open either.

So we’ll see if there’s more history to be made!