Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal advance to Wimbledon final

WIMBLEDON, England – At a quiet moment in a third set on a heavy Wimbledon day, Marat Safin suddenly loosed a despondent primal scream that caused serious giggling in the Centre Court audience.

It came between points, just after he’d barely touched another of the museum-piece grass-court serves in the Roger Federer exhibition that has played for six years running.

It also pretty much spoke for the 12 men who had to play either Federer or Rafael Nadal during this 122nd Wimbledon.

Those 12 had so little hope that when Safin finally lost to Federer, 6-3, 7-6 (3), 6-4, today – and then the anonymous semifinalist Rainer Schuettler lost to Nadal, 6-1, 7-6 (3), 6-4 – it felt as if Wimbledon had just finished 11 rote days of pretty much cleaning the house and arranging the furniture for two splashy weekend occasions.

Venus Williams will meet Serena Williams on Saturday in a women’s final that seemed obvious for a good week, and Federer will play Nadal in a men’s final Sunday that seemed obvious since the first artery-threatening English breakfast on the first Monday morning. It also made a few bits of repetition history.

Federer and Nadal became the first guys since Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg (1988-90) to meet in three straight Wimbledon finals, and they became the first guys to combine the three straight Wimbledon finals with three straight French Open finals for a full-on Swiss-Spanish domination of Paris-London summers.

Numbers went mad all around. Federer hogged his 40th straight win at Wimbledon and his 65th straight win on grass. Nadal became the first Spanish male to reach seven Grand Slam finals. Federer became only the fifth man in the Open era to reach 16 Grand Slam finals and the first man to reach six straight Wimbledon finals since Bjorn Borg, who sat in the audience. By reaching a third straight final, Nadal joined seven other men, one being Federer. Federer’s stay at No. 1 has reached 231 weeks. Nadal’s camp-out at No. 2 has reached 153 weeks.

Number of sets lost by Federer this tournament: zero.

Number of sets lost by Nadal this tournament: one, that to Ernests Gulbis of Latvia, who given Nadal’s ferocity ought to receive some sort of commendation, if not a lifetime supply of fish-and-chips.

“Pretty simple,” Federer said of his path. “I mean, I haven’t had many problems whatsoever throughout The Championships. It’s been, you know, a perfect way to the finals. … So far it’s been quite unbelievable, actually.”

“I think I did a very good tournament,” Nadal said, his English still gathering steam at 22.

They’ll play just four Sundays after Nadal ravaged Federer, 6-1, 6-3, 6-0, in the French Open final, but neither player finds that especially relevant as Nadal tries to finally cross the moat in Federer’s kingdom, having lost in four sets in the 2006 final and five sets in 2007.

Having torn through the 2002 winner, Lleyton Hewitt, and Federer’s 2002 conqueror, Mario Ancic, in the prior two rounds, Federer found Safin, a two-time Grand Slam champion making the first Russian entry into the Wimbledon final four.

Having said he frets when he sees Safin in his part of the draw, Federer went about showing why almost all the world frets when it sees Federer in its side of the draw. He never lost serve. He faced two separate break points in a single game of the second set and blew away those. A picture of smoothness against a player ranked No. 75 but playing much better, Federer’s presence seemed to make any Safin error – like the netted short-ball backhand to start the tiebreaker – seem doubly costly.

“Doesn’t do anything fancy,” Safin said. “Just plays how he needs to play to be able to win. He has a couple of shots when he’s under pressure. He does them all the time. So just nothing fancy.”

“I was winning my service games pretty comfortably,” Federer said.

In positive news, Safin, who’d burst from a slump to a semifinal in an exhilarating run, destroyed only one racket.

That left the stage for Nadal, who’d just annihilated Britain’s Andy Murray in the quarterfinals. He set about doing the same to Schuettler, a 94th-ranked former Australian Open finalist who at one early point simply had to dodge a Nadal serve to avoid wearing it. Within 23 minutes, Schuettler had 10 of 36 points, and Nadal had a 6-1 set.

“I don’t know if he missed one ball or not, but it was just left and right and I didn’t know what to do,” said Schuettler, who on Thursday had wrapped up a five-set, 5 hour, 12-minute quarterfinal with Arnaud Clement.

What happened next might come up in pre-final discussion, as Nadal’s ease of mission wound up bamboozling Nadal somewhat. “I started the match very easy, the first set,” he said, later adding, “But at the same time is difficult, because when the other starts to play a little bit better you feel strange on court, no?”

Schuettler played some clever stuff and attacked the net some and actually served for the set at 5-4 before spraying the court with errors and losing that game at 15.

Then again, he probably had no hope, lacking the surname Federer or Nadal.