The Men's Finals of the 2011 French Open got off to a great start if you are a fan of tennis. Roger Federer seemed ready to take the first set off Spanish stud, Rafael Nadal thanks to an early break off the top seed's first service game. Nadal was down 2-5 and looked out of sorts before he flipped the switch and rattled off five-straight games to take the set. Nadal won the set 7-5 and is up 1-0 going into the second set of tennis in the Men's Finals of the 2011 French Open.
Federer's serve has been fantastic throughout the 2011 French Open and continued to be early in this Finals. He was mixing up his location perfectly, pushing Nadal wide with kick serves to the back hand and then coming back up the middle in unpredictable fashion. Federer even mixed in some serve and volley play to further throw Nadal off his game.
Of the two, it was Roger Federer who seemed ready and more poised to start the match. Nadal made a few too many unforced errors early in the set.
From there, things turned dramatically around and it was Federer who started making mistakes and Nadal who was imposing his considerable will. Federer had 16 unforced errors to 10 for Nadal and saw his first serve percent dip to 67 percent after starting much higher.
It would have been huge for Federer to take the first set and has to be demoralizing to give up control and lose the momentum he had early.
The Nadal vs. Federer match started at 9:00 a.m. ET / 6:00 a.m. PT and is broadcast live on NBC TV in HD and will be streaming live online at NBCSports.com.