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ATP Rio de Janeiro: Final Prediction

By Nate Slaymaker

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ATP Rio de Janeiro Final Prediction: Ferrer vs. Nadal

David Ferrer left little doubt securing his spot in the championship match. He dispatched Andreas Haider-Maurer with relative ease, 7-5 6-1. Ferrer will Italian Fabio Fognini in the championship match on Sunday. After playing until the wee hours of the morning in his quarterfinal match, Nadal still looked sharp to start his semifinal. He had slow starts to each match in Rio, but had no problem breezing past Fognini in the first set just 16 hours after his previous match ended. Fognini turned it around again, winning the match, 1-6 6-2 7-5.

With the win, Ferrer reaches his 48th World Tour level final. Ferrer has always enjoyed success in the Golden Swing of tennis, the name given to the clay court matches played in February in South America and Mexico. He has won Bueanos Aires and Acapulco three times each.

For Nadal, the loss snaps at 52 match winning streak in clay court semifinals!

Ferrer struggled a bit at the beginning of the semifinal match, getting broken on his first service game. Ferrer fought back and served for the set at 5-4, but was broken again by a determined Haider-Maurer. It was then that Ferrer’s grittiness and dominance on clay was in full effect. He won eight of the next nine games to move on to the championship.

The players in the second semifinal could be forgiven if they came out flat. Fognini’s match ended around 1:00am and Nadal didn’t finish until 3:18am on the same day as their 1:00pm semifinal. Only one of the players looked flat. Fognini is known to be lethargic and then turn it up a notch when needed, but that is not usually a winning strategy against the King of Clay.

After dominating the firs set, the second set was a different story. Nadal looked a bit lost, going for many drop shots and getting called for multiple time violations. The violations frustrated Nadal. Fognini broke Nadal in all four service games in the second set to take it 6-2.

Tense moments were overcome by both servers in the third set. Serving at 5-6, Nadal started cramping. He saved two match points with the same play: a serve out wide and a big forehand down the line. On the third, a net court appeared to win the point for Nadal, but Fognini ran it down and flicked the winner over the net. For Nadal, the loss snaps at 52 match winning streak in clay court semifinals!

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The loss for Nadal is telling. He did cramp at the end, but he has not looked himself since winning his record ninth French Open last season. A 14-8 record is awful for a player of Nadal’s caliber. Injuries are partly to blame, but Nadal declared himself physically ready for this tournament.

Fognini has been close to exiting in three of his four matches at the Rio Open and is playing on borrowed time. For Fognini, the win erases an abysmal start to 2015. Coming into Rio, the world No.28 had only one win. A victory over Rafa on clay could be a season changer. It won’t get any easier against Ferrer.

Ferrer has played the best tennis of any player in Rio. Fognini cannot afford to get off to such a slow start or lose his mental stability in the final. Ferrer’s relentless playing style is known to frustrate the most calm of tennis minds.

Ferrer has never lost in seven career meetings with Fognini. Most recently, Ferrer topped the Italian in straight sets in the final of Buenos Aires last year. The consistency and retrieval skills of Ferrer are the kryptonite to Fognini’s enigmatic nature. Ferrer should have little problem capturing his seventh Golden Swing title.

Prediction: Ferrer

To see how each player reached this point, find the draw results here.

Next: Top 10 Servers in Tennis Today

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