Mustard
Bionic Poster
What downward spiral? Have you not been watching Nadal the past 6 months? He has played like crap. Nadal won 3 slams in 2010 so 2011 has been a disappointing year for him compared to last year's standard. Djokovic has cleaned his clock in 6 big finals this year. Did Djokovic or anybody else do that in 2010?
Apart from the Djokovic problem, Nadal's match results haven't really changed much compared to 2010, although I do think Nadal's serve and backhand are clearly worse than previously and he does look a step slower at times. I think it's totally wrong to say that Nadal has "played like crap" if we're talking about 2011 as a whole. He's the clear world number 2.