Nikolay Davydenko produced some inspired tennis as he inflicted a heavy defeaton world number 2 Rafael Nadal. The Russian won comfortably 6-4 6-2 in 90 minutes.

Both players shared early breaks, but it looked as if it was Nadal  ook who had started the strongest, when leading 3-2, with Davydenko serving, the Russian missed a sitter smash, which gave Nadal two break points. The Spaniard failed to convert either and from then on Davydenko produced some inspired tennis, he first held serve then broke Nadal to love and from then took complete control of the match.

This was only Davydenko’s second masters win and re-confirms his place amongst the world’s top players.

The focus of the ATP tour will now switch to the clay courts of Europe for the next nine weeks, which includes the three ATP Master Series events in Monte Carlo, Rome and Hamburg and finishes of with second grand slam of the year at Roland Garros.

Nikolay Davydenko and Rafael Nadal both had straight set semi final wins at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami to set up their first ever final meeting.

Nikolay Davydenko beat American Andy Roddick 7-6(7-5) 6-2. At one point during the first set tie break Roddick looked set to win the first set, when serving up 4-3 with a mini-break. Davydenko though turned the match around and won the next points on the Roddick serve and went on to win the set. Roddick never recovered from that and went down easily in the second set.

Roddick failed to hit his best form that seen him defeat Roger Federer in the quarter finals, it was only the big Americans second win in 17 attempts over the Federer.

In an almost replica scoreline Rafael Nadal was victorious 7-6(7-5) 6-2 over Czech Tomas Berdych.

The final tomorrow will be the third meeting of these two, with Nadal winning both the previous meetings. Both matches have been closely fought contests, going the full distance, the most recent last year at the Rome Masters which was played on Nadal’s favorite surface clay with the Spaniard winning 7-6 6-7 6-4.

In 2006 they met on hard courts (similar to the surface they will play on tomorrow) in the round robin match of the tennis masters cup, Nadal winning 5-7 6-4 6-4.