Marcos Baghdatis hit a winner from his knees. He coaxed the crowd to its feet with a booming backhand and a pleading gesture for support. He hit a dozen drop shots that touched the grass and spun at crazy angles. But then Rafael Nadal returned half of them for winners.
And when the 2-hour-26-minute Wimbledon men’s semifinal was over Friday evening, Baghdatis could only put his arms around the victorious Nadal and say, “Good job.”
For while Baghdatis’ shotmaking was often flamboyant and sometimes spectacular, Nadal was better. Nadal hit with such oomph that the dirt flew, and Baghdatis fell three times while trying to stretch his body an extra foot. Finally it was too much, and Nadal was the winner 6-1, 7-5, 6-3.
Though he is seeded second, Nadal is still an unlikely finalist. His native surface is Spanish clay. He has twice won the French Open but had never been further at Wimbledon than the third round.
Until now.
And for his reward, Nadal will play three-time defending champion and top-seeded Roger Federer in Sunday’s final.
Federer, saying he played “flawless” tennis Friday, needed only 77 minutes and allowed Jonas Bjorkman to win only four games en route to a 6-2, 6-0, 6-2 victory.
It was the most dominating victory in the men’s semifinals since 1922, when the tournament launched its current format. Bjorkman, an unseeded 34-year-old from Sweden, had been given little chance to pull an upset and afterward said, “I just felt it was, in a way, nice to be around and see how someone can play the nearest to perfection you can play tennis.”
Yet as dominant as Federer has been–trying to become the first since Bjorn Borg to take the championship without losing a set, winning his 47th consecutive grass-court match, becoming the only man since the Open era began to make five consecutive major tournament finals–he has a weak spot.
Nadal.
The Spaniard has a 6-1 career edge over the 24-year-old Federer. Federer’s only victory over Nadal came on hard courts in Miami in 2005. Nadal has beaten Federer twice on hard courts and four times on clay, including the final of the 2006 French Open and the semifinals of the 2005 French Open. Federer is 55-0 against everyone else this year, 0-4 against Nadal.
