Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have been battling hard against each other for a couple of decades. However, while Rafa was dominant in the first part of their rivalry since 2015, something has changed with Federer winning 7 of their last 8 encounters.
Toni Nadal on Federer’s strategy
Rafa’s historical coach, uncle Toni, during a recent interview with ,Blick explained that Roger was having the wrong strategy at the beginning as he was allowing Rafa to boss him from the baseline. It’s well-known that the Swiss ace was struggling a lot when Nadal was putting pressure with his forehand on Roger’s backhand. However, something has changed later as Federer started to become more aggressive.
“Since 2017, Federer has found a very effective system against Rafael. He used to block the service often, now he hits back with pace. I always said at the time that Federer was wrong with his style of play and he would have to be much more aggressive in returning and playing with a lot more pace,” said Toni.
“I always said at the time that Federer was wrong with his style of play and he would have to be much more aggressive in returning and playing with a lot more pace,” he added.
After Federer won that historical Australian Open final in 2017m, after the match he said it clearly that he decided to go for the shot as he didn’t want to allow Rafa to put pressure on him with the forehand.
That worked well!
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Roger Federer in 2020
Ranked world no.4, Roger played his last match on the 30th of January when he lost to Novak Djokovic 7-61 6-4 6-3 in the semifinal of the Australian Open.
Roger Federer’s best accomplishment of the current year was reaching the semi-finals at the Australian Open.
Rafael Nadal in 2020
Currently ranked no.2, Rafael played his last match on the 29th of February when he beat Taylor Fritz 6-3 6-2 in the final in Acapulco to win his 85th career title.
Currently, this year the Spaniard has a 13-3 win-loss record. Rafael clinched 1 title in Acapulco.
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal played each other 40 times. The head to head is 24-16 for Nadal. The last time that they competed against each other, Roger Federer won 6-4 6-3 in the final in Shanghai (Shanghai Rolex Masters) in October 2017.
