I deal with facts, I leave the excuses to the zealous fanboiz questioning my impeccable logic.
RF's 2016 was as crap as 15 (14, 13)... (Or not so much crap as "Djokovic was too good for him".
But RF was playing a slam he won many times, on HC, against a guy UNUSED to having crap slam-free years.
Of which there were two in a row. In which he waa worse than Fed was in those same years. (15, 16.)
RF was used to being third wheel at this point, it was normal to him.
For someone who loves to pat himself on the back for his objectivity, this post is anything but objective.
Fed's 2016 was quite poor for even his 2014 and 2015 standards, as the, well,
facts, imply. Note, for instance, his 75% win percentage which was down from 2014/2015 by like ten percentage points -- that's HUGE. Funnily enough, it was the same as Nadal's win percentage in 2015 and only slightly higher than Nadal's own 2016, so that's already one point against the "Nadal's 2015-2016 seasons were
way worse than Fed's 2016" claim, proven objectively. He also won zero titles in 2016, the first time this has happened since, if I'm correct, 2000, while Nadal did actually claim a Masters in 2016. And it's not like Novak was really stopping him too much: they only met once. After his Wimbledon loss (to Raonic of all people), he pulled out of the rest of the season and had knee surgery. And, of course, his previous three seasons (2013-2015) basically solidifed that, well, Fed was getting left behind by a younger generation: his winning days were over. By all accounts, he should have been happy to even reach the AO QFs, let alone the semis or the final.
I don't get how "being used to being the third wheel at this point" is supposed to indicate that Fed's confidence should have been higher than Nadal's. That's absurd. Wouldn't being used to losses lower your confidence, not raise it? When you think you don't have a shot anymore, when you've had loss after loss handed to you at the big stage for four straight years, how on
earth is that a clearly more preferable situation to having two crap years in succession? I'm not even arguing Fed had it tougher, mind; just that his situation and Nadal's were at least comparable and that any difference between them is a tiny one.
He had won the AO many times... in the past. His last win had come in 2010, only one year after Nadal's victory in 2009: they were both similarly far from their last victory at the AO. Nadal had actually come closer to winning the title since and, y'know, he was facing an opponent against whom he should have felt confident beating on this surface. Their previous match there, in 2014, was a straight-sets takedown and Fed had never won a match against Nadal there. The overall head-to-head was in Nadal's favor as well, so that's nothing to worry about. Obviously, this wouldn't have come into play if it was Djokovic he was facing across the net, but this was Federer; Nadal
knows he can beat Federer at the AO. And not just Federer, but 35-year-old Federer; surely those five-setters Fed had faced earlier on in the tournament would have taken a toll on him?
There is no way you can justify with facts that Nadal had it monumentally tougher than Federer leading up to the final, and there's no way you can talk about his lack of confidence without even making a passing mention of why Fed shouldn't have been confident either. It's a double standard. Why won't you just admit that, my Objective One?
I think we both know why.
