So we are now looking at a real possibility of something that was simply not possible to predict 12 months ago — two Grand Slams to Roger Federer and two Grand Slams to Rafael Nadal. Of course, Rafael will have to get past Kevin Anderson on Sunday to win the US Open, but clearly he is hugely favoured to win. The Spaniard also ends the year as the World No. 1 and that says a lot of great things about Nadal but also some not so great things about the rest of the circuit. More on that later.

Anderson used his power game to power past Carrero Busta and make his first Grand Slam final. The South African is really a genial giant who has a demeanour as gentle and shy off court as it is aggressive and powerful on court. He gained a lot of confidence when he defeated Sam Querrey and 23,000 Americans in the earlier match. He fed off that success and momentum to power past Carrero Busta. Anderson should not be celebrating his first Grand Slam final, but backing himself for his first win. True, he is against one of the greatest champions of all time who is clearly favoured to win, but his only chance is to back his big serve that’s going well and to remain fit on court and calm between the ears. He simply has to be believe and shut out all the noise.

For Nadal, he has had the perfect road to the final. The first week was a little up and down and in many ways that helped him to get strong for the second week where his win against Dolgopolov was critical to getting rhythm. Nadal must have known that his big test would come in the semi-finals against either Roger Federer or Juan Martin Del Potro. The Argentine was the eventual semi-finalist and Nadal simply was too good for him on Friday night.

Del Potro started well but in the second set he starting fading a bit even as Nadal — always a late starter — found his rhythm. Nadal is clearly enjoying being healthy and is stretching himself further and further with confidence. He is serving well and his court coverage is as good as it has ever been. For Del Potro, he now goes 2-0 ahead of Federer in Arthur Ashe, and New York still awaits the joy of a Federer-Nadal encounter.

In my preview I had mentioned that this was the best chance for the under-25 generation to assert themselves and actually make deep inroads in the tournament. One expected a Dominic Thiem or an Alexander Zverev or a Nicholas Kyrgios to be in the last four or even eight.

Instead we did have the young Russian, Andrey Rublev as the only under-25 semi-finalist and now have two 31-year-olds fighting it out for the titles. The highly vaunted GenNext was not able to capitalise on the absence of Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Novak Djokovic. They simply have not found it in themselves to step forward and challenge the stalwarts.

— Gameplan