Gonzalez outmuscles Nadal
Fernando Gonzalez has outplayed no. 2 seed Rafael Nadal to take his place in the 2007 Australian Open tennis semi finals. Showing that his wins over Lleyton Hewitt and James Blake were no flukes Gonzalez has used his huge forehand to dump Nadal out of the tournament in straight sets.
From the start of the match Gonzalez out hit his opponent and he easily took the first set 6-2. In the second set Nadal looked like he may get back into the match however Gonzalez kept hitting winners when it mattered and he won the second set 6-4.
At this year’s Australian Open Gonzalez has been showing the influence of playing under his new coach Larry Stefanki. Instead of trying to hit a big winner off every shot using his big weapon forehand Gonzalez is using the slice backhand to stay in a point and when he sees his chance he unleashes the forehand. Using this style he was able to contain Nadal and win comfortably. The final set went his way 6-3.
In his match against Nadal, Gonzalez hit 41 winners compared to only 16 unforced errors. Constrast this with Nadal who hit 14 winners and had 21 unforced errors. These statistics sum up the dominance of Gonzalez. His break point conversions were 5 of 8 while Nadal was 0 of 3. The only stat Nadal won for the night was the service percentage which was 71 to 66 per cent.
By reaching the semi final this is now his best grand slam result. Gonzalez has reached the quarter final stage at all of the grand slam events however until now he has not reached a semi final. If he can keep his nerves under control he would be favoured to defeat in next round opponent Tommy Haas and could even go all the way and claim the Australian Open Tennis title for 2007.
