[Arnab]

Originally Posted by Tigers_eye
The balls were changed. They started to test new grass the year before actually.

Sure. But if Ivanisevic could have won it, so could Sampras. It was still much faster than what we have these days. You are bringing up lame excuses. Sampras wasn't quite the force anymore and Federer played really good tennis that day.

Again we are going in to the grey terretory. Ifs, buts doesn't matter. Nadal played a game according to his game plan and beat the current World #1 and 5 time defending champion, with a consecutive winning record of 40 alone in this tournament and 65 in Grass overall. That is enough to say how good Nadal played.

If you are going to regurgitate the scoreline as some kind of a proof, then I am afraid this is not going to go anywhere. My point is to say that it would have definitely been over in three or even four sets is absurd. Federer was a break up in the second, and if Federer wins that set, it's a completely different match.

I say, had there been no rain interruptions, the game would have been over in three sets. 4 max. No way Federer had the stamina to continue to dual with Nadal. The rain interruptions allowed Federer to breathe and not get burried in a one sided match.

Nonsense. Federer does not play a physical game. The guy barely sweats after a match. Remember the really long clay court match they played in Rome Masters 2006? That one went on for 5 hours, and Federer had couple of matchpoints in that match too. He slugged it out with Nadal on clay for five hours straight and hardly looked tired.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Federer is an extremely fit individual. He can run for days. On any surface.

But that rain break certainly helped Federer mentally. He got the chance to regroup, talked to Mirka a bit and probably settled down mentally.

And head to head yes, Federer may have an edge on Nadal but in tiebreakers Nadal is almost close to flawless against anyone else. He faced three tiebreaker sets in this wimbledon before the finals. The highest points one could muster was 3. That even getting a 6-0 lead. He has started to play the big points much better and very focused.

Yet Federer won both tiebreakers. Look at Federer and Nadal's career tiebreaker records. You will find that Federer has the better tb record by far. That's why it makes sense to say that if the fifth set went to a tiebreak, it probably would have favored Federer.