Federer had already secured a record 13th semi-final place at this tournament after beating Novak Djokovic and Thomas Berdych earlier this week but had to fight to secure victory here.
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What Djokovic’s eagle-eyed operatives will also have noticed, both on court and in the statistics, is Nadal’s increasing willingness to attack the net, something nobody would have predicted with any confidence even a year ago.
For Djokovic, it was important to bounce back from Tuesday’s shock loss to Federer, which snapped streaks of 38 consecutive indoor wins, 23 overall since August 23 and 15 straight at the World Tour Finals.
Nadal certainly has plenty of motivation to drag one last effort from his aching limbs as he attempts to end the worst year of his career on a high.
“Maybe for his standard it’s not the best season”.
“Obviously it’s not the way I would like to finish the year, it’s a bit disappointing not to have any wins here”, he said. “So I (will) try to recover well today and tomorrow, and I will get good tactics ready and try to play another good match”.
The momentum appeared back in Nadal’s favour when he capitalised on a few sloppy errors to go a break up at 6-5, only for Ferrer to hit back on his fifth break point in a lengthy 12th game and he clinched the set after an error-strewn tie-break from Nadal.
Kei Nishikori staged a heroic comeback effort against Roger Federer in his last round-robin match at the ATP World Tour Finals on Thursday, but ultimately fell to a three-set defeat that eliminated him from the prestigious season-ending event.
But the eighth game of the first set proved pivotal: Djokovic chased down a number of thundering groundstrokes from Berdych, as he does so often, and eventually forced a mistake from the Czech which resulted in the Serb taking a 5-3 lead. “I feel really good about my body”, he said.
“We (have) played so many times”, Djokovic assured.
In the second set, Sharapova broke Kvitova to lead 3-2 before the Czech broke back in the next game to level at 3-3.
At 45th in the world rankings, Bedene is clearly Britain’s second best singles player, and Murray was effusive in his praise after using the 26-year-old as a clay-court practice partner last week.
But the 34-year-old still needed to beat Nishikori to be certain of advancing as the group victor and he finished the job in two hours and 10 minutes to emerge from the first phase with a 100 percent record for the seventh time.
After Saturday’s semifinals, the climax to the World Tour Finals takes place on Sunday evening.
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Then with Christmas not far away, Federer joked: “Maybe I’ll think of Santa and keep it. It’s around the corner”. These elements and others continued in the second set which Roger would go on to win 6-2.
