Wimbledon 2019, Semi-Finals: Roger Federer vs Rafael Nadal, Preview and Prediction
After his hundredth match win at the Wimbledon championships, when Roger Federer was asked about his potential semi-final clash about Nadal (the Spaniard was then playing Querrey then), his answer was that he would play his natural aggressive game, and the result would hinge on what answers Nadal could up with to that sort of aggressive grass court play.
It was as honest an answer as one could expect from the Swiss maestro. His spate of recent winning streak was broken by Nadal, expectedly on the Parisian clay. But if that result was pretty much on the expected lines, could we say that an expected result here would be a Federer win?
Possibly, yes. But this cannot be as emphatic an answer in the affirmative, as the chances of Nadal winning their French open clash. For starters, Federer has never beaten Nadal in the French Open, whereas the latter has got the better of his great rival at Wimbledon once in three attempts, in that epic 2008 Wimbledon Open final.
Oddly, the two have never met at the Wimbledon since then. Much of that owes to Nadal’s failure to reach the latter rounds in many of these intervening years. But Nadal seems to be again playing some of his best grass court tennis in the last two seasons. He lost an extremely close match to the eventual champion, Novak Djokovic, in the semis last year.
He would certainly like to outperform himself this year. He has dropped just one set, to the eccentric Nick Kyrgios, in the tournament so far, when compared to Federer’s two. However, Federer will be the favorite to seal this match.
The Swiss maestro may not have looked his very best so far. Yet, Wimbledon is his favourite grand slam, where he has enjoyed the most success and has been the most consistent among all his grand slams. Losing to Nadal at the French Open was on the expected lines.
Even losing to him on a hard court grand slam is acceptable. However, losing to his greatest rival at Wimbledon for a second time in his career would be simply unacceptable to Federer. It is that extra bit of motivation, added to his superior record on grass, that makes Federer a slight favourite in the semi-finals of Wimbledon 2019.
Prediction: Roger Federer to win in Four Sets
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