The last two years, Roger Federer didn’t have a spectacular post US Open.  One year, he didn’t make the semis, and this past year, Davydenko upset him in the semifinals.

Roger Federer, however, knows better than anyone, the value of the ATP World Tour Finals.  Even if a sizable tennis audience ignores tennis after the US Open (consider the illustrious New York Times which doesn’t even bother to cover these finals despite a part-time staff of 5–surely one of them could devote a week to watching 2 matches a day), this year-end event is worth 3/4 of a Slam.  Match for match, it’s the most point-laden tournament.

This was the first year Roger Federer failed to make the semis at a Slam since, well, a long time ago.  He lost in the quarters of the French Open to Robin Soderling (so far his only loss to Soderling) and to Tomas Berdych at Wimbledon (his second loss to him this year).  He reached the semis of the US Open and had match points, but eventually lost to Novak Djokovic.

Since returning back to play from the US Open, Federer has been striking the ball well.  He won Stockholm, a tournament he hadn’t played in a decade, to tie Pete Sampras’s number of title wins, then he won Basel (over Djokovic) to break the record, surely an intentional goal for a man as well-prepared as Roger Federer.

When Roger Federer is playing free-flowing tennis, and it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to, he can appear effortlessly dominating.  He had Djokovic struggling to get balls.  Djokovic wasn’t even playing all that bad, but Federer has a way of making Djokovic look ordinary.  The second set was a bit of a tighter affair with Djokovic getting an early break.  However, Federer won that break back, then broke again, and finally held for the match.

Djokovic can now head back to Serbia where he and Troicki and Zimonjic will try to beat the slightly favored French team, most likely Gael Monfils, Michael Llodra, and Arnaud Clement playing doubles.  The French team will hope for one upset on Djokovic while the Serbian team will hope for a Djokovic sweep and Troicki upsetting one of the two Frenchman.  Otherwise, they will need a miracle in doubles where the French are likely to be strongly favored.

That leaves the year-end championships with a rare final: Federer vs. Nadal.

It used to be, when Federer won a fistful of tournaments, he would encounter Nadal all the time, especially on clay.  Nadal built up a gaudy record against Federer on clay, but Federer could never quite even it up because Nadal wasn’t (in the early days) good enough on hard courts to reach the finals and challenge Federer.

In the last two years, the two have met only twice, and both in the same tournament.  In 2009, Federer finally beat Nadal on clay at Madrid, in altitude.  The two met again in 2010, again in the finals of Madrid, but did not face each other again.

This will only be their third meeting since 2009.

On the downside for Nadal is his very long match against Murray.  However, Nadal is usually in pretty good shape.  Nadal played a marathon match in the semis of Madrid in 2009 (even longer than the match against Murray).  Yet, he still came very close to forcing a third set against Federer.  And who can forget the 2009 Australian Open final when Federer played Nadal, two days after a marathon match against Verdasco.  Federer even pushed Nadal to 5 sets (though he played an awful fifth set).

This time, Federer is playing about as good as he can and Nadal is perhaps a little short of playing super well.  Even so, Nadal is so aggressive and has so much confidence playing Federer that he won’t be nervous playing Federer.  I think Federer feels his game has improved a fair bit, especially his versatility off the ground and his backhand.  I lean slightly to Federer to win this.