Juan Martin Del Potro reaches his first Grand Slam final

It was an impressive performance from Juan Martin Del Potro to take apart Rafael Nadal like that, in three consecutive one-sided sets, yet somehow the performance itself didn’t seem overly surprising, though maybe the scoreline did. Del Potro has the ability to play consistent and aggressive tennis, a lethal combination and he can execute it time and time again as he has shown us throughout the year with his overall consistency.

I think the impressive part is that it didn’t really look like he was playing out of his skin, instead it just looked like an extremely confident young man who had absolutely no doubt that he could play at this level. To some degree, it was the kind of inspired performance you usually only see at Grand Slams, progressively building up confidence over a two week period and the opportunity to seize the moment.

It didn’t go Del Potro’s way initially, and it was much more closely contested than the score suggested. The stage looked set for a long, hard battle, with Nadal trying to maneuver Del Potro around the court, and Del Potro trying to overpower Nadal, or more specifically rush him into error. Del Potro looked comfortable trading groundstrokes, making use of that effortless power of his not really going out of his comfort zone, mostly trading crosscourt blows and not really hitting that close to the lines.

The early signs for Nadal were okay. He came out with a clear idea to use the slice backhand, to not only make Del Potro bend down, but to have it breaking away from the court to open up the court for himself to take control of. At the time, the only thing that appeared to be separating the two, were the big difference in quality of serves between Nadal and Del Potro. Del Potro already has a significantly better serve than Nadal, or at least one that is far more capable of obtaining cheap points, but the gap seemed greater magnified by Nadal’s abdominal injury which meant that his serve lacked in pace.

Still it was difficult not to be amazed yet again, by Del Potro’s newfound ability to play well on the big points, where he routinely found big serves then finished it off with a groundstroke with no hesitation. Considering the relatively large backswing that Del Potro has on the forehand, it becomes particularly noticeable how much confidence plays a part in this, and he almost always maintains his racquet head speed.

Nadal had his fair share of break points, but every time he got a look in, Del Potro saved it. As much of a fighter Nadal is, it had to wear on him mentally and he didn’t have the security on his own serve, so he started to feel a sense of hopelessness. As Del Potro started to gain in confidence from the back of the court and take more risks, Nadal’s game subsequently started to look weak in comparison, not capable of making enough of an impact.

As well as Nadal can scramble, the ball shoots through the court in New York, and while he can somehow often reach Del Potro’s stinging groundstrokes with his racquet, it became a familiar sight seeing the ball bounce too low for Nadal to do anything with it often slicing it into the net.

Nadal’s returning position certainly didn’t help matters, and put him from the defensive right from the start. The interesting thing is that on these fast courts, if you move up to the ball, you really don’t need to do that much with it to get good reward from it basically by using the pace that is already there. I mean, you don’t really need to make a big effort to hit it hard if you take the ball early. Short backswing, and it will quickly make its way back to the opponent’s side.

But as hard as Nadal tried to generate pace on his own given that the ball had lost its sting by the time it reached contact point, it still didn’t end up being all that effective. Unfortunately midway into the first set, it looked like Nadal had already given up on the idea of using the slice backhand, and from then on, he didn’t seem like much of a threat anymore.

About midway into the second set, or early in the third set, Nadal didn’t really believe he could pull off the victory anymore. I suppose because Nadal’s game is so much about building up pressure and Del Potro didn’t allow him that. Del Potro played the match almost entirely on his own terms. And the bigger the lead Del Potro got, the better he played and the more risks he started to take. That’s when it gets scary because it’s almost machine-like, and that’s why it’s hard to feel any hope being on the receiving end of this barrage.