Nadal Right in Time

In a fabulous and epic final, Rafael Nadal completed his clay court trophy collections as he won the Masters Series of Hamburg for the first time in his career and maybe for the last one, because last year this event shouldn't be a Masters Series any more and could replaced by an event in Madrid. But the German federation is still fighting for his best tournament.

Federer started the match very strongly and took an early 4-0 lead and then 5-1. At this point he had won 14 games in a row against Nadal in this special stadium after last year final 2-6 6-2 6-0. But when he served for the opening set he got broke and Nadal called the ATP Trainer. This obviously troubled Federer as he lost the next 6 games (it made 7 with the break before the trainer came) to be trailing 7-5 1-0 and down a break in the 2nd set. He eventually waked up and broke back scoring 4 games in a row and was once again serving for the set a 5-3. Then Nadal was hitting less powerful shot but much more precise ones and manage to levelled the set at 5 a piece and even 3 break points to lead 6-5. Then Roger Federer focused on his serve and with 5 straight winning serves he hold serve to go to a tie-break. There he let the unforced error behind him to win 7 points to 4 the 2nd set tie-break.

In the third set Nadal has the advantage of serving the first and in the 4th game he broke Federer's serve and even if Federer try to fought back it was too little too late as Nadal saved perfectly the break point he faced and then served out the match and with a last cross-court backhand winner he left his arm to the sky and was down to his knees while Roger was waiting to congratulate him for his 11th ATP Masters Series title and his 6th different Masters Series.

Federer was very disappointed and said "I wish I could have won today, then I would have an even better feeling, the way the match went today I can also say I feel well, the three hours wasn’t a problem whatsoever. From a physical standpoint that is a good thing for me. I just take two days off and I will be in Paris practicing. It's going to be fun next week and then I will hopefully be ready for the tournament."

"I could have maybe served a little bit better," explained Federer. "When I served for the set, the second time where he broke me at 5-1, but I thought, all in all it was all right. It wasn’t my best performance; if you get broken so many times there is always something you are a little bit unhappy about. But I think I am finding the right type of play from the baseline."

They both will be ready for next week 2nd Grand Slam in my hometown of Paris, see you then ........