The design of a control system, that provides a model reference performance specification for the command response and, at the same time, achieves some prespecified feedback properties, is discussed. The use of a particular configuration of a two degree-of freedom controller will allow the feedback and performance specifications to be tackled independently through the design of a feedback controller for the nominal plant and the model reference part by means of model matching in a min-max sense. A closed-form solution is provided for the optimal min-max controller. This closed-form solution will be very useful when using this controller in an adaptive way. The resulting adaptive controller will consist of a fixed feedback part and an adaptive open-loop part. Only one degree-of-freedom is adapted. An example will show that it is possible to match the model reference performance specification, even near the stability limit.