Absolutely not and there is nothing in their H2H that would even suggest this.
absolutely yes, federer has beaten much better versions of nadal on clay ( hamburg 07 and madrid 09 ) in Bo3, nearly beat the very best of nadal at that time ( rome 06 ) ......
prime federer would've taken him out ...
You need to stop perpetuating this flawed transitive property logic. Federer took out Soderling in 2009, the same Soderling that took out Nadal. Was Federer magically going to beat Nadal just because he beat the guy who beat Nadal? I don't think so.
its not transitive property. Its called taking the whole context into the picture ..a) soderling wasn't in the same form in the 09 final that he was in the 4R match vs federer b) 'if' nadal had played similarly as he did vs soderling and federer as he did vs soderling, federer would've won vs nadal ; but we all know had nadal reached the final, his level would be clearly better ...that was a one-match for nadal vs soderling ...
whereas in 15, he was in utterly cr*p form prior to the RG QF vs djokovic, not so likely that he'd have been able to raise his form enough to beat a peaking stan .
Like I said, I take the whole context into the picture ....
Was Murray expected to beat Nadal? No
Was Wawrinka expected to beat Nadal? No
Was Fognini expected to beat Nadal (even though he had already beat him earlier in the year)? No.
Nadal has fallen so far from his prime, yet Djokovic was the ONLY person favored against him on clay. Djokovic was expected to beat Nadal because he was having a tremendous clay season and because he had beaten Nadal more than anyone else in the past.
djokovic was the only one favored, but there was plenty of talk about others possibly beating nadal as well
Yeah, sure. Because the stats say otherwise:
1st Serve (average)
Wimbledon 2011, U.S. Open 2011 & Australian Open 2012 (F): 71%
Wimbledon 2008, Australian Open 2009 & 2012 (SF)[/b]: 71.3
Aces (average)
Wimbledon 2011, U.S. Open 2011 & Australian Open 2012 (F): 5.7
Wimbledon 2008, Australian Open 2009 & 2012 (SF): 4.7
Nadal was pretty much the same across most stats, yet Djokovic won all 3 matches while Federer lost all 3.
and now you demonstrate your pitiful knowledge of stats ..
Are you aware of something known as winner-UE stats ?
nadal was +9 IIRC in AO 09 final vs federer, +4 in AO 12 semi vs federer and -27 in the AO 12 final vs djokovic ...djokovic's superior defense is not enough to explain that ...
nadal was +26 in wimby 2007 final, +33 in wimby 2008 final, and only +6 in wimby 11 final ...djokovic's superior defense is not enough to explain that
there are other things in stats as well, but its useless going into detail regarding that with you , as you measure performance by 1st serve% and ace%, LMAO !
only a delusional djoko guy like you can believe that nadal was in the same form in wimby 11 as he was in wimby 07 and wimby 08 finals .....same goes for nadal of USO 11 w.r.t to AO 09 F and AO 12 SF form ..
AO 12 final was somewhere near, but still quite clearly lesser than AO 09 F and AO 12 SF final forms ...
What does this even mean? You're going from one crap argument to the next. And then when I destroy this one, you're going to change it to something else.
"It's not about style of match-up, it's about Argument #3"
it was about style of play always - an offensive style of play needed to beat an in-form nadal on clay >> but then you are clueless as usual ........
hence the choice of soderling, federer, delpo over djokovic vs an in-form nadal on clay ..