I think Djokovic was the only person to bring him to a tiebreaker.

That was the year where everyone was speculating that Djoker could be the 2nd best player on clay.

Yeah Novak nearly did come back and take the 3rd set if I remember correctly.

Well during the clay season that year, Federer and Novak were pretty much not far off from each other. Even though Roger did make the Monte Carlo/Hamburg finals and nearly took a couple sets off Nadal in those matches, Novak was the only other player to actually win a Master Series title on clay that season which was at Rome. Then on top of that, his success at both the Australian Open and Indian Wells made him the man to beat at that time, so it wasn't unreasonable to believe that Novak could of been a better player overall than Roger at that time. I mean confidence does a whole lot of good or bad to your game, and it was a perfect example between Federer/Djokovic that year where Federer had absolutely no success like he had in the past and suffered, while Djokovic was having the time of his life and it carried on through the year even to the Masters Cup, the only real blip being that at Wimbledon. The reason having no success prior to the clay season didn't affect Nadal as much, was simply that Nadal hasn't really had much success at all aside from Indian Wells in the past, so I think mentally for him, anything during the first leg of the ATP season, he feels is more of a bonus.