Nadal vs. Federer, Take Seven

Why am I still awake at five o'clock in the morning? Because I refuse to let potential history pass me by without making at least a cursory attempt at witnessing it.

At the moment, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are playing for the Australian Open championship. A win for Federer would be the fourteenth Grand Slam title of his career, a win for Nadal would leave him needing just the US Open short of the career Grand Slam. It's worth it to stay up a little late.

Federer is currently down in sets, 1-0, as they play in the second. I might have expected Nadal to be fatigued after his epic semifinal match on Friday evening, I think it was, but he is holding his own and taking advantage of some sloppy play from Federer, who keeps hitting his shots just long. He did that last year too, in the match I live-blogged here. I still don't know the reason.

5:06 AM - You have to appreciate a match where each player constantly wins points that make you ask yourself, "Do I really need to sleep tonight?"

5:10 AM - Someone touched on an interesting point tonight, asking the question, "Will we be able to call Roger Federer the best player ever if there is one player he just can't beat?" I considered something similar last year and would have pursued it further had Nadal won the US Open: at what point do we begin to consider Nadal among the all-time greats? He still might be viewed as one-dimensional in terms of Grand Slam wins, with four of his five major wins coming at Roland Garros, but he won Wimbledon last year, and the Olympic gold medal, and if he wins the Australian today...I'm just sayin', I don't think he's all that far from at least entering the conversation.

He currently leads: 7-5, 3-2.

5:17 AM - Usually when the announcers talk about how Federer might be in trouble, I just tune them out. Not when he plays Nadal. He can pump up the volume and exert his will to defeat mere mortals. Not when he plays Nadal.

5:19 AM - Another thought on the idea of Nadal as the Greatest Of All Time: Andre Agassi won eight Grand Slams (four Australians, two US Opens, a French, and a Wimbledon) and an Olympic gold, but Pete Sampras is universally considered the better player. The biggest differences that I see are that Nadal has won more at a younger age than Agassi (5-1 at the same age) and I don't recall Agassi beating Sampras the way Nadal does Federer.

5:26 AM - I was right: Sampras was 20-14 against Agassi, including 4-1 in Grand Slam finals. The presumed better player actually holds the upper hand. Nadal is 4-2 against Federer in the same situations, pending tonight's result.

5:30 AM - I've been typing too furiously to pay a ton of attention, but from what I've seen, Federer is looking a lot better. If he can break Nadal here, he goes up 5-3 in the second set.

5:35 AM - Five break points later, Federer finally breaks Nadal to take the aforementioned 5-3 lead.

5:38 AM - Federer wins his service game and the set to tie the match at one set apiece, and that's my cue to go to bed. I blame Joey for the fact that I'm pulling a Rhoden here - he tends to wake up early and even though he's just eighteen months old, it generally takes both my wife and I to chase him around.

Fortunately, though, I have the DVR programmed to record for the next few hours (hopefully they don't switch coverage on me, as a scroll on the bottom of the screen just suggested; I'm remaining optimistic because I just can't imagine them moving this match from ESPN2 to the Tennis Channel just so Mike & Mike can be shown at its regularly scheduled time). The nice thing about this particular unit is that it has a setting that allows me to copy programs to a VHS tape. If only the one we had in Nashua had included the same features, I would have a hard copy of last year's Wimbledon classic on hand.