|
LONDON: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will renew
their epic rivalry on Sunday when the world’s two greatest players
meet in a third successive Wimbledon final.
Five-time champion Federer will
try to become the first man in history to win six consecutive titles
and move to within one victory of the record 14 Grand Slam titles
won by Pete Sampras.
Victory would take Nadal, the
four-time French Open winner, alongside Rod Laver and Bjorn Borg as
the only man to win Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same year.
The 22-year-old would also become
the first Spanish men’s champion since Manuel Santana in 1966.
Federer, the top seed, was
detained on Centre Court for just one hour and 41 minutes as he
compiled a 6-3, 7-6 (7/3), 6-4 win over Russia’s Marat Safin, the
former US Open and Australian Open champion.
Nadal defeated Germany’s Rainer
Schuettler 6-1, 7-6 (7/3), 6-4 in his semi-final, taking just 20
minutes longer.
“It’s great,” Federer said
after wrapping up what was his 65th straight win on grass. “It is
a beautiful feeling to have the opportunity to win the title
again.”
Federer, who had been widely
written off this season and was destroyed by Nadal in the French
Open final four weeks ago, admitted he had been surprised by the
gloomy predictions of his standing in the game.
“I guess you can say what ever
you like but I was surprised by how intense it was,” he said.
“But the fact was that Rafa beat me so easily in Paris and went on
to win at Queens.
“He has been playing
fantastically but don’t write me off too quickly because this is
my part of the season, Wimbledon and the US Open.”
Nadal came close to taking the
world number one’s All England Club crown in 2007 and is being
widely tipped to dethrone Federer on Sunday.
“I didn’t play my best today,
not like the quarterfinal and the second round,” said Nadal.
“But I’m very happy to be in
the final again and I’ll be facing the best player in the world on
the other side of the net.”
Schuettler had spent three more
hours than Nadal getting to the semifinal, including tying the
record for the second longest men’s match in Wimbledon history in
getting past Arnaud Clement in the last eight.
That was five sets taking five
hours and 12 minutes spread over two days.
On Friday, he was a set down in
only 23 minutes with Nadal breaking in the first, third and seventh
games to threaten a Centre Court rout.
But the 32-year-old German
rallied and broke Nadal to take a 2-1 lead in the second set with a
wrong-footing, cross-court forehand on his way to taking a 5-4 lead.
Nadal, however, broke in the 10th
game as Schuettler served for the set and then dominated the
tiebreak.
The Mallorcan illustrated his
intimidating, all-court power by unleashing a 100mph forehand in the
second game of the third set before breaking the dispirited German
to lead 2-1.
Schuettler saved three match
points in the ninth game but his fate was sealed in the 10th.
--AFP
|
