Berdych served as spoiler at Wimbledon when he beat Roger Federer in the quarterfinals.  He was hoping to do it again against Nadal.  Initially, it didn’t seem like it would go that direction with Nadal dominating the first set with a 6-2 win.  Nadal’s focus dropped some as Berdych also played more aggressive tennis and held serve more easily.  Berdych rode the break to a second set win, 6-3.  In the third set, Berdych had a chance to break Nadal with 0-40, but Nadal managed to hold the game, then broke late to get a 5-3 lead then serve to close it out.

That leaves the tournament with a rare meeting.

Although Nadal leads the head-to-head 14-8, Nadal or Federer have been 1 and 2 for so long, that they almost never meet anywhere except the finals.  Indeed, they’ve only met in the semifinals 3 times.  Two of them were at the year end Masters Cup where round-robin play can cause the two top players to meet in the semis.  The only other time was back in 2005 when Nadal won his first French Open and beat Federer in the semis.

The two have met in Miami twice before.  Once in 2004 when Nadal came out of nowhere to upset Roger Federer in the round of 32.  They met in the finals the following year with Nadal taking the first two sets, but Federer coming back to win in 5 sets, the only time Federer has ever done that against Nadal.  Of course, to save time, all Masters 1000 finals are now best of 5 sets.  The only 5-set tournaments/matches are now in the Slams or Davis Cup.

This will be an interesting match.  Nadal generally performs a bit worse when he is being coached by Francisco Roig who coaches when Uncle Toni doesn’t make the trip.  The US/Canada hosts 2 back-to-back Masters 1000.  Indian Wells and Miami in mid-March to end of March, and Toronto/Montreal and Cincy just before the US Open.  Toni usually comes for Miami and Cincy.  Nadal usually plays better.

Right now, I feel Nadal is playing a bit better than Federer and I give him the edge.  Federer isn’t playing bad by any means.  Indeed, he is playing relatively sharp compared to the last 2 years.  While he’s probably not quite at the level he was at London, I don’t think he’s too far beneath it.  It’s just that Nadal and Djokovic seems like the class of the field.

Federer will need to serve well and not make too many errors.  Federer played ultra-aggressive against Nadal in the year-end finals.  However, Nadal had come off a very tough match against Murray back when Murray was sharp, and that left him fatigued against Federer.  And Nadal still kept it pretty close despite this by taking a middle set, before losing the third set in a lopsided fashion.

Nadal did play a somewhat long match against Berdych, but the points were relatively short with Berdych making too many errors.  One can’t imagine Nadal would be fatigued from this.  Of course, Federer only played ten minutes, so he won’t be tired at all.

Federer will have something to prove.  The general feeling is that he’s given ground to Djokovic who has somehow leapfrogged both Nadal and Federer.

Djokovic is barely ahead of Nadal right now, but has great confidence because of his long win streak.  It’s almost like he’s forgotten how to lose, but he struggled in the first set to keep even with Nadal in Indian Wells.  Even the second set was touch-and-go.  Djokovic broke to get a lead, only to see Nadal break back immediately.  Djokovic then broke a second time and was able to claim the second set.  Nadal seemed rattled with his first serve percentage plummeting.  Nadal seemed so scared of hitting anything but a speedy serve that he stubbornly continued to go for big serves.  Nadal may have been planning ahead, deciding he needed to play this strategy if he wants to continue to beat Djokovic.

If Federer loses to Nadal, then he’ll solidify the belief that Nadal and Djokovic have passed him by.  Of course, Federer is the ultimate optimist and he would disagree with this.

Federer needs to return Nadal’s serve well.  Nadal’s serve, despite not being the biggest, tends to confound his opponents.  He gets so much action, it’s hard to deal with, and players, believing they need to attack the return, often miss the return trying to make it too good.

Ah, the other semifinal.  I suppose most folks think that Fish can’t beat Djokovic.  I’d probably agree.  If he somehow upsets Djokovic, it will be his biggest win since Indian Wells a few years ago (although that was a truly amazing run, where he lost to Djokovic in the finals, but beat Federer, Nalbandian, Lleyton Hewitt, and Davydenko en route).