Nadal and Federline meet in final

Claycourt genius Rafael Nadal goes head-to-head with the world’s top tennis player on all other surfaces, Roger Federer, in a dream final of the ATP Masters Series Monte Carlo event.

The final will see second-seeded Nadal put his staggering streak of 66 consecutive wins on clay on the line against Federer.

Federer advanced to the final with a 6-3 6-4 win over 16th-seeded Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain.

Nadal then set up the show-stopping championship match with a 6-0 7-5 victory over 10th-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic.

Federer is a 10-time Grand Slam champion and has won the last three - Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open – but still needs to conquer the red clay of Paris if he is to complete the set.

But Nadal is the two-time defending champion in Monte Carlo and has a 6-3 career record against the Swiss superstar, including a 3-0 advantage on clay.

Nadal has not lost on the slow surface since falling to Russia’s Igor Andreev in the quarter-finals of the 2005 Valencia Open.

Federer overcame a slow start against Ferrero.

“I didn’t start off the way I wanted, but Ferrero is a very tough player, especially on this surface,” said Federer.

Federer seems to have shaken off the brief slump he had last month, when he lost a pair of hardcourt matches to Argentina’s Guillermo Canas.

He won the last two meetings with Nadal on the grass at Wimbledon and the hardcourts of the Tennis Masters Cup last year, but he will need to be at his very best if he is to have a hope of beating Nadal on clay.

Nadal was supreme in the first set against Berdych, losing a total of just seven points.

Berdych bounced back in the second set and held a 5-4 lead. But Nadal won the next three games to close out the match.