The last time Mardy Fish and Rafael Nadal played was in the quarterfinals of Cincinnati.  Rafael Nadal, like many other pros, loves Japanese food and his team was at a local Japanese place when Nadal handled a very hot plate and burned his fingers.  This caused Nadal to struggle a bit with his backhand.  In particular, in the previous round, Nadal played fellow countryman, Fernando Verdasco, in a match that went three tiebreaks, including a 11-9 third set tiebreak.  In such Masters 1000 matches, once the matches start up, players play pretty much every day from Wednesday to Sunday, so Nadal had to play the day after against Fish.

Fish, up to that point, had never beaten Nadal.  But Fish was having his best year.  He had previously played Nadal at Wimbledon and although he lost that match,  he did take a set off Nadal.  Fish would say he learned a bit from that match, in particular, that he wasn’t that far off from contending with Nadal.  Fish won that match 6-3, 6-4, but even he probably realized that he caught Nadal at an opportune moment when he was less than his best.

This was not the case in Tokyo where Nadal has yet to drop a set.  The pattern for this match seemed similar to the pattern of his previous match against Giraldo.  Nadal had some trouble handling the serve games of Fish but as the set wore longer, Nadal was finding himself in more service games against Fish even as Fish was holding.

Nadal’s early strategy against Fish appeared to be lobbing balls high goading Fish to try a big shot and hoping for the error.  To some extent that worked, at least on his own serve.  Nadal would play a few points very aggressively, but was winning points off his own serve with decent serves and of course, his groundies.  Nadal was more efficient than spectacular today.  Once Nadal secured a break then held to win the set, Fish tried a different strategy.

Fish began the second set playing more aggressive, but the result was, as one might expect, more errors, and soon Fish was down one break, then another, and was very frustrated with his game play.  Fish lost the second set 6-1.

This means Nadal is in the finals of Tokyo with a chance to defend his title.  Nadal has never defended a hardcourt title.