1) I don't think Nadal would've drawn that much confidence out of that RG match. He knows Federer is capable of much more than that and he wouldn't be stupid enough to think Fed was going to keep playing at that level against him especially at Wimbledon.
2) Fish had never even gotten close to beating Rafa prior to that WIM11 match whereas Soderling almost took him down in WIM07 and was just coming off making his second RG final in a row. Ferrer made the QF twice at Wimbledon, Fish only once. He only made 4R once as well, every other time Fish was out early. Ferrer has also made 4R at WIM many times I believe, so yeah, Ferrer can play well on grass, he's not exactly a mug.
Here are Fish's stats against Nadal:
53% 1st serve
12 Aces
0 DF
29% return points won
27 UE
33 W
Sod in 2010
60% 1st serve
17 Aces
33% return points won
6 DF
35 UE
42 W
Nothing about those stats convinces me that Fish was the tougher opponent. Sod had a relatively much higher first serve percentage and with his monster serve, that means on grass he would've been much tougher to break than Fish who was only serving at 53% first serves yet still gave Nadal a lot of trouble. That's very unusual.
3) OK fair enough, but I don't see how you can say he was better in 2011, he only won 1 more game even though there was another whole set played compared to the previous year. In 2011 Murray folded early on in the second set and never got back into it. In 2010, he was more consistent and only reason he didn't get a set was because Nadal was better.
4) Yes it is a whole other discussion. I went over it a few times with Djokovic2011, even yesterday. I do think Nadal is better on fast HC than Novak. They both have 5 Masters on fast HC, but Nadal has 2 US Opens and as I said, the only year Novak got it was when the courts were slower.
People often forget how well Nadal actually played in the 2010 US Open final. They dismiss it as easy draw, Novak wasn't playing well all year etc, but to hit that many winners against him shows how confident he was.
Federer's highest ever winners count v Novak at US Open was 51 in 2008. 20 of them from Aces. Nadal hit 49 winners with only 8 of them aces. Of course, a winner is a winner, but the point I'm making is off the ground, Nadal performed better than Federer ever did vs Novak in terms of W/UE ratio.
In fact, I really believe that Fed would need to be in his 2004 US Open final form to have a realistic shot of beating Nadal that day.
5) Well again, I'm not really sold that Federer's confidence was shot after that RG final. Fed knows he's a lot better than that and so does Nadal so I'm sure he would've been able to shake that loss off relatively quickly. His form in Halle and Wimbledon showed no signs of lost confidence whatsoever, if anything it fired him up and knowing Fed he would've wanted to prove a point that he's MUCH better than what we all saw in that RG final.
It's the Wimbledon loss that really shook Fed's confidence, look at his results after that match until he won Olympics doubles. They were shocking for him.
