Preview : Davydenko vs. Nadal

Rafael Nadal will try to win his 10th ATP Masters Series title and his first Sony Ericsson Open at his second attempt against the Russian and World n°4 Nikolai Davydenko in tonight's Final. Before Nadal became the well-known Spaniard and world N°2, he reached the 2005 Miami final as the n°29 seed. He led 2 sets to love against World N°1 Roger Federer before losing in a thrilling 5 sets final. It's after this final, his first major final at 17 years of age, that he become the clay court king and started his 81 matches wining streak on this surface.

Both players will try to play the same kind of tennis they did in their Semis, in a best of three sets match and not in a best of 5 anymore. Miami was the AMS event to be played in a best of 5 matches. From now on only Grand Slam tournaments and the Tennis Masters Cup Championship match are played in this format.

The Spaniard will try to join Federer and win his 6th different ATP Masters Series; one behind "The Kid" Andre Agassi won 17 AMS title and 7th out of the 9 of the circuit. The winner also will be the first man from his country to capture the singles title in the tournament’s 24-year history. While Davydenko reached SF or better in 8 Masters Series Events (except Cincinnati - QF in '06).

Both players have a better record in ATP career finals than Roger Federer (76%) with 79% (11-3) for the Russian and 77% (23-7) for Nadal. They met 2 times previously, and both time they had to go to a deciding sets with Nadal wining it by 6 games to 4. Each time they played, even on clay court it is a very close match with Davydenko close to the victory each time. The match is played on only few points here and there. Davydenko doesn't seem to pay a lot of attention of the head to head as he showed against Roddick where he was down 0-5 in their H2H, wining only one set.

Nikolai Davydenko is known to be the player to attend to the most of tournaments, he played 30 tournaments last season, but coming into this week's final he played 5 tournaments and as much as Nadal.

En-route to the final Davydenko had a lot of trouble as he lost the opening set 3 times on 5 matches, and spent 10h30 on the court while Nadal had lost only one set (to Blake) and spent 8h34. Nadal has an impressive record on his serve this week as he held 92% of his service games and broke 43% while returning.

Regarding the rankings, Nadal had a good month of march as he had to defend his Indian Wells title and a Quarter-Final here last year (i.e. 625 pts), he lost to eventual Champion Djokovic in this year first ATP Masters Series event and with this week final he saved 575 pts, he can win 150 more points with the title. And gets closer to the N°1 spot by 50 points with this March tournaments. But now is the time to the Clay court season where he can't win any point (except by winning Hamburg). The N°1 spot is on the hands of Roger Federer and on his hands only as he is the only one who can change things if he doesn't have great results. Current World N°3 Novak Djokovic might be too far behind to be N°1 by the end of the Clay court season, but who knows...