Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It’s as personal a confrontation as a prize fight. But boxers may settle matters in minutes; the trial tennis puts these players through lasts three, or four, or five hours. The tennis we saw in the first set of one of these matches seems separated by an eternity from the tennis we’re watching in the fifth.
I went back and watched that game again. Nadal had struggled to hold serve all match long and been broken several times. But he won this game easily, as Federer mishit two returns. The mystery was Federer’s sudden loss of form. Nadal had gone into the match having barely survived a five-set, five-hour semifinal played a day later than Federer’s semi, which Federer swept. Nadal had started to show fatigue in his third set against Federer, though he won it in a tie-breaker, and in the fourth set he couldn’t break Federer when the opportunity came and then Federer had taken over the set and won it easily, 6-3.
What had fascinated me about Federer’s collapse when it happened was the way it violated all rhyme and reason, and I was grateful to Del Campbell for not trying to explain it away. I like to believe that some things happen for reasons that are simply unknowable, and Del didn’t pretend that to the expert eye they don’t.
