Nadal Beats Federer To Win Record 18th Masters Title

Rafael Nadal defeated Roger Federer 6-4 7-6(5) in a tight clay court final of the Madrid ATP Masters to extend his clay court dominance of the all-time Grand Slam title holder 10-2 and he now leads their storied head to head rivalry 14-7.

The match was an interesting, nervous and erve-wracking affair. Federer had a breakpoint in Nadal's very first service game but continued his inexplicable behavior of failing to convert breakpoints at an acceptable rate against the Spaniard. Nadal struck back by holding serve and following it up with a break of Federer. The Swiss player returned the favor by breaking-back and holding to go back up 4-3 on serve. Nadal's backhand has vastly improved and is forehand is deadly. Only late in the match did Federer start combining his deadly forehand with the finesse of forehand drop shot winners. The second set was mostly on serve (just one break each) and in the tiebreak Federer was up 4-2 when he went to the drop shot one time to many and made the fatal error of playing it to close to the net. Nadal was not even going to run for it! Instead of being up 5-2 he was up 4-3 and Federer proceeded to make 3 consecutive unforced errors to bring Nadal to championship point. Federer erased that with a crisp cross court winner but then on the second championship point on his own serve, Nadal's service return bounced badly and Federer swung and completely missed the ball, ending the match!

By winning in Madrid, Nadal avenged his loss to Federer from last year, the first time they have played in over a year, and became the first player to win 18 Masters titles (all but 5 of which have been on clay), ahead of Andre Agassi at 17 and Federer himself at 16. Of course, Federer also own 16 major titles, to Nadal's paltry 7, but that may change in about two weeks once the 2010 French Open is concluded.