One of the simplest and natural appealing motion control strategies for robot manipulators is the PD control with feedforward compensation. Although successful experimental tests of this control scheme have been published since the beginning of the eighties, the proof of global asymptotic stability has remained unattended until now. The contribution of this paper is to prove that global asymptotic stability can be guaranteed provided that the proportional and derivative gains are adequately selected. The performance of the PD control with feedforward compensation evaluated on a two degrees-of-freedom direct-drive arm appears as fine as the classical model-based computed torque control scheme.