How old is nadal 2011

He hung in the fight, though, and Nadal accommodated him when serving at in the second. Having wasted his chance in the first set, Federer was under pressure to find something special to stay in contention and he broke for parity.

But Nadal, livid with himself for his slip-up, got to the tie-break breathing fire and again snuffed out Federer's revival , with some decent serving and a withering cross-court forehand, to go two sets up.

The third went with serve before Federer cracked again, going down and, behind in the serving cycle, he was badly bruised. However, for all his bank clerk mien — Juan Ignacio Chela put it best earlier in the week when he said he needed to "get his socks dirty" — Federer has a fighter's heart and he broke back to love.

Just short of three hours Federer hit his 11th ace to stay in the match at He then lifted his game one more time and held three break points. He netted a forehand to waste the first but a charge at the net and a majestic chip to an empty court gave him the game and a glimmer of hope.

He served out to take the set and now it was Nadal who looked shattered. Federer was gathering strength and confidence, punishing Nadal for staying deep with a series of exquisite drop shots.

The next shift in the drama arrived in the fourth game of the fourth set, as Federer's concentration let him down on his own serve and Nadal hurt him for two wayward ground strokes to go up.

Nine years ago Rafa beat eternal rival Roger Federer in the final, after that the Swiss had interrupted Novak Djokovic's impressive streak in the previous round. This year, however, there were doubts about the chances of the year-old from Manacor, also due to the different position on the calendar linked to the global pandemic.

Nadal has once again denied his detractors by winning the tournament without giving up a single set, as well as demolishing world number 1 Novak Djokovic in the final. As compared to the other years, the Spaniard found these ones to be particularly challenging.

Evaluating level from season to season will always be somewhat of a subjective conjecture. Also, while Rafa's level might indeed have dropped a little, any tennis player will know that how well you play, also depends on how well your opponent allows you to play. In other words, it is possible for Djokovic to make Nadal play worse than he otherwise would. Just as it has been possible for Nadal to make Roger Federer play worse, make more unforced errors and miss huge number of breakpoints, when those two meet.

Nevertheless, with these caveats in mind, let's take a look at the stats to see if we can find a drop or not. First, we note that Nadal has turned 25 this season and age wise that would suggest that he's in his absolute prime. Now, let's move to the other numbers.

Looking at the statistics for , it is clear that Rafa's return game hasn't suffered much. He's No. Only Djokovic does better in those categories. While I do not have the statistics, I believe it is safe to say that Rafa's return game cannot have been much better than this. His serve is more of an open question as I do not possess the data and his positions are further removed from the top.

While he probably did better in some of these categories in , I doubt that he was leading them. Here Rafa has already made the same finals he did last year, namely nine, but whereas he had a record last year in finals, he's a less stellar this year.

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