Roger Federer can change many things. He can effortlessly change the flight of the ball with his precise racket skills. He can change the tone of a match with his sublime abilities on court. He can even change the way an opponent is forced to play his game, due to the unrelenting pressure he applies.

The problem for Federer is that one person is immune to this force - and that's Rafael Nadal. What’s interesting is that both players contribute to this anomaly; it’s not just Nadal’s birthright on clay that’s giving him the edge. The disparity between Nadal and Federer on clay isn’t so much a mental chasm, which many have suggested. Instead, I believe that the games of each player, both well defined over the past few years, shift the balance of power over to the Spaniard.

Nadal’s game on clay is hyper-aggressive. On an inherently slow surface, where points are often thought to be won with patience and persistence, Rafa’s attack-first (and always) approach is what wins him a lot of matches. This mentality is aided by some tremendous physical gifts, including a short backswing on his forehand and backhand. Because the bounces off clay aren’t as true as they are on a hard court, Nadal’s more compact ground strokes give him more accuracy, coupled with an explosive release.

Contrast this with Federer’s elongated wind-ups for his shots, and it’s no surprise that Roger is the one with more unforced errors. In Sunday's Monte Carlo final, Nadal had 19 winners to 19 unforced errors. Federer also hit 19 winners, but he had double the amount of unforced errors at 38.

The fact that the winner totals are the same for each player, yet the end result was a rather one-sided affair, should tell you two things about Federer – first, why he is so good on grass and hard courts, and second, why the rewards are not coming his way on clay. Federer’s taking the risks, I feel, although certainly not to the potency of Nadal.

Roger’s game isn’t a defensive game, but the more calculated way that he plays doesn’t yield the same results on the dirt as they do on a speedier surface. Federer’s dirt game seems to be, in a way, stuck in the middle. It’s perfect on grass or hard courts, but on clay, it’s good – but not good enough to threaten Nadal.

One thing that I feel Federer could do, in an effort to slow down Nadal’s aggressive game, is to employ the slice backhand more on clay. This was commented on at length during the 2006 French Open final, and also in the  Monte Carlo commentary. Federer seems to do this on other surfaces often, but on clay, he shies away from this calming shot. Surely, some unforced errors would disappear and it would slow down the pace of the match, which Nadal feeds on.

Even though Roger’s forehand seemed to let him down more than his backhand, I still feel that his backhand is the greater liability against Rafa. Some of the three break points that Roger squandered early in the first set could have benefited from some variation on his ground strokes, with the backhand being a big part of it.

If Federer is to beat Nadal on clay, he needs to change his game a bit – he can’t worry about Nadal. Their latest encounter showed that there’s still has a long way to go in terms of Roger besting Nadal on dirt. Whether he can do it is an entirely different question. Clearly, Roger is going to need something besides just crowd support (which he got at 4-5 in the second set, after Nadal’s 'headband incident'*) to give him that extra push.

There are two positives that Federer fans can take out of this week  – first, that Roger reached the final with relative ease, and without dropping a set. The second is that there’s still a long way to go until the French Open begins.

*I do not know exactly what Nadal did with his headband to provoke Federer to consult and argue with umpire Carlos Bernardes after the point, but when we next saw Nadal, he wasn't wearing it. He then collected it from a ball boy, and his aqua-coloured headband had clay on it. Quite possibly he tossed the accessory aside during the point, and in Federer's mind, distracted him unfairly.

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