It's a grand slam for red-hot Nadal

PARIS -- Was that Roger Federer masquerading as Captain Ahab? Or was it Captain Ahab masquerading as Roger Federer yesterday at a steaming playground called Roland Garros?

Doesn't matter much because the big one got away again, and took the champion's cup with him, 1-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4).

That was Rafael Nadal, who plays Moby Dick opposite Federer's Ahab. It didn't turn out quite as gruesomely as the old fishing writer, Herman Melville, set down the tale. No, Federer didn't drown in the red sea of clay. But he was soaked by a stream of unaccustomed blunders as he tried vainly to land the leviathan of the French Open.

The futile chase has been going on now for a little more than two years. Federer, driven by his Ahabian obsession, goes whaling -- and gets whaled. Five straight times; 6 out of 7. This is not supposed to happen over and over again to the No. 1 tennis player of the seven seas and beyond. But for Federer, bringing a racket instead of a harpoon is a big mistake. Maybe a gigantic net would help, too.

But at the moment No. 2 Nadal, surfacing spectacularly and duplicating his French title of a year ago, is the best player in the game regardless of what Blinky, the ATP computer (and even the modest Spaniard himself), have to say. Never beaten in this town, the frisky 20-year-old lefthander reaches back toward Bjorn Borg, the youngest to win a French pair (of his record six titles) in 1975 at age 19.

Well, there goes the neighborhood, say the folks who felt Federer was going to get his hooks into a golden year for the game. He'd been moving nearer to hauling in Nadal (2 match points in the recent Italian Open final), and seemed to have plotted his course well. As the holder of the Wimbledon and US Open crowns in 2005, and the Australian Open in 2006, Federer was primed to take the French. That would have made him the first to win four straight majors since Aussie Rod Laver's Grand Slam of 1969, and a candidate for an ultra-rare Grand Slam of his own by repeating at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadow. Such a whale of a season -- except Nadal was in no mood to be caught.

All those dates with history-making swirled in Federer's head -- but so did that bloody orca from Mallorca. Nadal. That was too much pressure in one head, and Federer will have to wait and brood almost a year before laying another trap on clay where Nadal's winning streak has spouted to 60.

For three boiling hours it was mainly disappointing Federer and brilliant Nadal.

Nadal acknowledged ``beginning very nervous in the first set" when Federer sailed at his target by taking the first five games. But the Swiss was careless in the second game of the second set, losing it from 40-0, and Nadal was all over him. A spin doctor supreme, Nadal was sending high-bouncing, jitterbugging shots at Federer's backhand, balls moving as crazily as a Tim Wakefield knuckler.

He was also demanding that Federer deal with too many balls, fielding incredibly and keeping points going until Federer missed, or he put them away with that sizzling inside-out forehand, as torrid as the 92-degree matinee.

That's the speedy Nadal's style, delightful to compatriots in the stadium-filling crowd of 15,171, sorrowful to the vast majority who chanted Federer's name and pleaded for recovery. It came about twice. Leading, 2-1, in the third set, Federer cornered Nadal at 0-40, had four break points, but was not allowed to go farther.

Nadal asked, ``It is a very important moment, no?" Yes, very.

Federer, appearing to be jolted emotionally, sagged. Strangely, he wasn't as aggressive as he'd been in pressing Nadal at the Italian, not slicing enough or attacking second serves, stationing himself too far behind the baseline. His error count was ugly -- 66 to the victor's 29, 37 on the backhand. Nadal made 12 of those errors in the shaky opening set.

``Maybe it was the heat that I didn't come in more," Federer said. He regretted playing poorly -- ``but Rafa was tough, very solid" -- and yet he came within three points (4-5) in the tiebreaker of provoking a fifth set. When Federer ended a Nadal run of 14 straight holds, to 5-5 in the fourth, his partisans were up and screaming. It was their last display because he couldn't control his money shot, the forehand, in the overtime, or enough at other times.

Federer, who had been 7-0 in major finals, said, ``It's obviously my goal to win this event." (His lone missing major.) ``I think the second set was the turning point. If I can keep up with him, put him under big pressure, lead by two sets . . . but giving it away like that . . ."

Argentine spectator Guillermo Vilas, the lefthanded champ in 1977, whose clay court record of 53 straight was demolished by Nadal here, marvels at his successor. ``You give him a little, and he wants some more. A little piece, then something bigger. Maybe the court, then the stadium." Eventually France.

Moby Nadal has a big appetite as Ahab Federer will tell you.