World No. 1 Rafael Nadal faces heavy underdog Stanislas Wawrinka in the men’s final tonight at the Australian Open.  Does the Swiss ball-bruiser, who will crack the top five next week, have a chance to pull the upset?  Our columnists debate.

The Case for Nadal (Nick Nemeroff):

Rafael Nadal enters the Australian Open final having never lost to Stanislas Wawrinka. The Spaniard has won all 12 of their previous meetings and all 26 of the sets they have played. While there have been an abundance of close sets, Wawrinka will surely do his best to ignore the previous matches these two have played.

Adding insult to injury for the Swiss, Nadal looked marvelous in his comprehensive victory over Roger Federer in the semifinals. I would also be remiss not to mention that Nadal has already won 13 grand slams, whereas Wawrinka has not played in a major final until now.

The reality for Wawrinka is this: he must win three sets against a player he has never even won one set against. Nadal has a massive mental edge going into this match, and it goes without saying that Wawrinka will need to muster up every ounce of belief and confidence he can find before stepping onto court Sunday.

As far as the X’s and O’s are concerned, Nadal should dominate on serve. Federer was ineffective when he attempted to step in and flatten out his backhand returns, so Wawrinka shouldn’t fare much better because he tends to chip his returns back into play. A chip return, usually much weaker than a driven return, will give Nadal more than enough time to find his forehand and dictate the rallies as he pleases.

Nadal’s devastating cross-court forehand has been giving one-handed backhands nightmares for years. Even Wawrinka, who possesses arguably the best one-handed backhand on the planet, hasn’t been able to find a solution to Nadal’s forehand and the topspin associated with it.

If Wawrinka expects to hit through Nadal, he’ll need to simultaneously decrease his margins and unforced error count, which is easier said than done. The cooler night conditions should slow things down quite a bit, making Wawrinka’s task even more daunting as it becomes harder to penetrate the court with groundstrokes under those circumstances.

The fitness levels of both men should be closely monitored. Wawrinka comes into the final having fought through five brutal sets with Novak Djokovic and four tightly contested sets with Tomas Berdych. Nadal was pushed to the brink physically against Dimitrov but he had no trouble with his body against Federer.

I wouldn’t be astonished if Wawrinka wins a set, but it would take a near-perfect performance, one combining near-faultless consistency and supreme physicality, for the Swiss to take the title. There are too many things Wawrinka has to do well over an incredibly long period of time to see him having a realistic chance. I think he’ll make it a tighter match than Federer did, but anyone watching this match should fully expect Nadal to be hoisting his 14th grand slam title.

The Case for Wawrinka (Yeshayahu Ginsburg):

Does Stan stand a chance?

The easy answer is no. No chance at all. In their 12 matches, from 2007 until 2013, Wawrinka has not taken a single set off Nadal. Not one. In terms of sets won, it’s 26-0 in favor of the Spaniard. That hints to a matchup issue that goes far deeper than simply Nadal being the better player.

But this is a different level of Wawrinka than we have seen in the past. He hasn’t done anything special in particular that has turned him from a solid top 10-15 player into a Grand Slam finalist. What he has been is more consistent, removing the mental errors from his game that have plagued him his entire career.

Also, sets and matches won do not tell the whole story. The last two times this pair has met, both on fast hard courts at the end of last season, the matches were tight. Three of the four sets were decided by tiebreaks. Although Wawrinka lost all three of those, it was due to mental errors rather than inferior tennis. And if we’ve learned just one thing about Wawrinka this tournament, it’s that we can no longer count on him to buckle under pressure when the time comes.

That’s all this will come down to. Can Stan handle the pressure or not? His tennis is there. He can hang with Nadal on the court. He showed it to us in Shanghai and London last year. He just needs to show it to us again in Melbourne.

There is a long-standing myth that one-handed backhands cannot handle Nadal’s heavy topspin. This is due to the fact that Roger Federer’s backhand consistently breaks down against Rafa. Without fail, Nadal can draw errors from Federer by hitting heavy balls into Federer’s backhand side. And, the standard assumption in tennis is that if Federer can’t do something, no one can.

Well, with all due respect to Roger Federer, Wawrinka has a better backhand than he does. With all due respect to everyone (including you, Richard Gasquet), Wawrinka has the best one-handed backhand in the world. Moreover, Grigor Dimitrov showed us the fallacy of this assumption a few nights ago when his backhand stayed consistent against Nadal all match.

Stan can hit it just as hard as Federer does, just as accurately. But he takes it earlier, which means that Nadal’s topspin will affect him less. If Wawrinka waits for the balls to come to him, his backhand will end up looking like Federer’s backhand does against Nadal. But if he can step in and take balls early, using his backhand as the lethal weapon it is, he can compete against Nadal.

It is also still unclear how much pain Nadal’s hand is in. He has had a few days since the blister’s nastiest moments, but there is no way to know just how much it is affecting him. His serve most likely will still not be perfect. Wawrinka needs to take full advantage of this. Rafa’s success on hard courts, for much of his career, has been directly related to the strength of his serve. Wawrinka needs to attack Nadal’s second serves and keep him nervous about keeping his first-serve percentage high. If Wawrinka can keep Nadal’s serve from being a weapon, he can get into a lot of Rafa’s service games. Wawrinka’s only real chance of winning is if this match is decided on the strength of the Nadal serve.

Most of all, though, Wawrinka needs to keep the pressure off himself as much as possible. He has a big serve that can win free points. He needs that. If he gets behind in his service games, this match can get ugly very quickly. He needs to play from ahead. Some players have trouble keeping their level up while playing from behind, while others can’t stay focused while playing with a lead. But it is a guarantee that playing from behind against Rafa, especially for a player that is 0-26 in sets against him, is a sure way to a straight-sets loss.

If Wawrinka plays as well as he’s played all tournament, and Nadal does not step his game up from what he’s shown us so far, this match has the potential to get interesting. Wawrinka definitely should be able to win at least one set here. And, if he can hit the right shots at the right moments (and a little luck never hurts), who knows what can happen?

Join us tonight for a live blog of the Australian Open men’s final.