Staying Power

What a shame.

*

What a shame that such a spectacular bullfight of a match had to end on a double fault.

*

This has to be one of the great all-time matches at Melbourne Park - it's certainly the longest, clocking at a massive five hours and fourteen minutes, going longer than even Andy Roddick's match against Younes el Aynaoui, which featured a two-and-a-half hour fifth set. That was the direction I thought this match was heading for a while - something like 21-19 in the fifth. It deserved it. If yesterday was 'Try it Again' by the Hives, today was 'Going the Distance' by Cake. This was an absolute war of a match. And what staying power both boys showed!

*

Who would ever have thought that Fernando Verdasco could push Rafa Nadal all the way like this? Rafa wasn't out of sorts or anything - Nando just took him on, and went toe to toe with the world number #1 for the whole match. He hit ninety-three clean winners in the course of the match - and the way Rafa defends the court, that is some achievement. He played one of the all-time great tiebreakers to take the fourth set (what if he had played that way in the third set breaker as well? The match could have been veeeery different.) He got fatigued but fought through it, finding a second (and a third and a fourth and a nine-hundredth) wind. And perhaps most impressively, he matched Rafa for intensity pretty much every point. And that is something else.

*

I've written almost wholly about Nando here - and that's because he really is the one that played the exceptional match. By his standards, this was a good match for Rafa too - but it is very, very rare that he we see someone take him on like this. Not to belittle his achievement, but his game and his strength and his concentration have become almost commonplace because we see them so often. To see Verdasco matching him - a player who, in the past, has crumbled on the big points - was amazing. Rafa may have taken the match in the end, but in the end, I think Nando's victory was the greatest. He's proved that he belongs in the top ten for sure.

*

Not to belittle the achievements of Rafa. He didn't let the pressure that Verdasco was exerting on him get to him - too much. There was a moment where he smacked himself out of sheer frustration, which is positively demonstrative for Rafa. He played a great match to hang in there against an opponent who was on fire. But I'm afraid I've fallen into the same trap with Rafa that I berate people for with Federer. His excellence is so evident in every match he plays that it becomes commonplace. Sorry, Rafa.

*

I know better than to question how he's going to pull up after this match - knowing him, he could probably have gone on for another five hours. That said, I bet Roger Federer was glad knowing that Rafa's match was about three times longer than his was. Not that Roger had an easy today physically either - there have been power outages all over Melbourne because of the extreme heat conditions, and apparently the Crown Casino precinct, where both the top boys stay, went down in the early evening... and Roger and Mirka had to walk down thirty-six flights of stairs to get to the tournament site, where they camped out and watched the match in the player restaurant. Thirty-six flights of stairs ain't easy.

*

So it's going to be a final for the ages, and I think it's fitting - even if I was gunning for the surprise finalist. The challengers have fallen away. Djokovic and Murray have both faded into the background. And now we have the two men who have dominated tennis for almost five years now, in a showdown that I think we're going to remember for some time. They've never played night tennis against each other before - so we're going to have a new look at the Hispano-Suisse tennis powerhouses. We all know who I'm pulling for. But it's going to be a good one, nonetheless.

*

Back to Fernando a minute, before I go. Apparently, before the Davis Cup final, the Spanish team gathered at a ranch just outside Mar del Plata and the team captain, Emilio Sanchez, asked each of the men what he wanted to get out of the Davis Cup final. Nando replied that he wanted to be a hero - a hero for Spain. I think he has proved here that he can be a hero for himself as well. I have a feeling his career is going to be wonderful this year.

*

Though the real hero is obviously whatever product it is he uses in his hair. Five hours - nearly five and a half - and not a strand moved. Forget tennis. That is some serious staying power.

*

*

Australian Open

*

Men's Draw

*

Rafael Nadal def. Fernando Verdasco, 6-7 (4-7) 6-4 7-6 (7-2) 6-7 (1-7) 6-4