It was unclear, heading into London how Nadal was going to fare.  Much like last year, Nadal had a somewhat indifferent fall losing to Murray in the final of Tokyo and to Mayer in Shanghai.  Nadal opted, for the second year in a row, to not play Paris and prep for the year-end championship by practicing.  Most years, Nadal had to worry about Roger Federer, but this year, he’s also had to worry about Novak Djokovic.

While he didn’t play badly in the first round against Mardy Fish, he was nonetheless pushed to three sets with Fish playing aggressive tennis but unable to get past his nerves in the tiebreak.  That three hour match likely took a toll on Nadal even though he had one day of rest.  Federer also played a three set match, but his match was half the length of Nadal’s, 90 minutes to 3 hours for Nadal.

Federer’s strategy was to hit out against Nadal and hope he zoned.  Federer used a similar strategy against Berdych pushing the Czech to the sidelines, trying to rob him of time to set up and hit power shots which Berdych has been doing well as of late.

In the first four service games, Federer struggled a little returning Nadal’s serve.  He wanted to attack the Nadal second serve by running around it hitting either hard up the line or hard inside out.  Nadal does as good as job at playing defense as anyone in the world, but with Federer pressuring him with hard shots crosscourt or inside out, Nadal was left scrambling to return balls.  Federer also hit his down-the-line forehand well to counteract Nadal’s backhand.  He also has improved his ability to hit his backhand off the rise or to slice it as needed, though historically, he’s had problems using the slice effectively against Nadal who has the biggest strikezone of any player and can hit balls that barely come off the court as well as anyone.

Once Federer broke in the first set, he seemed to gain confidence.  He had a chance to break a second time in the set, but did not do so.  However, he came roaring out of the gates in the second set breaking Rafa on his first service game, then he had a 15-40 game which Rafa brought to deuce, but Roger again broke.  Finally, he broke a third time to take the third set at love.

Even Federer knows that he was in a zone today and that Nadal was a bit off his game.  They could meet again in the finals, so he has to be ready for that.

Federer is the first to qualify for the semifinals.  The reason is simple.  At worst, Roger will be 2-1 in round-robin play, and that’s if he loses to Mardy Fish.  Rafael Nadal and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are both 1-1, and they face each other.  Only one of them can win, and so that player will be 2-1.  The other will be 1-2.  Thus, the loser of that match and Mardy Fish will be eliminated.

Federer still has some incentive to win his third match.  First, he’ll pick up 200 points.  It’s the easiest way to pick up almost the full points of an ATP 250 event in one match.  Second, it will mean he’ll play Group A’s number 2 player.  Right now, it’s not clear who this will be.  Djokovic and Ferrer are both 1-0.  Wednesday’s match will do a lot to clear up who is likely to come out of Group A.