Roger Federer and revenge is an odd and unpredictable
combination. I don’t mean “revenge,” precisely. The word doesn’t apply in
today’s professional, above-board, we’re-all-in-it together ATP the way it did
when Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were promising to follow each other “to
the ends of the earth.” Let’s say that it’s Roger Federer and making a stand that’s the odd and unpredictable combination.
Fortunately and unfortunately for Federer, he suffers from
lack of experience in these matters. For the last seven years, he’s had the
boot firmly on his opponents’ necks, and has very rarely had to come into a
match on a losing streak against anyone. In that time, only Rafael Nadal and
Andy Murray have beaten him three straight times. That’s what Tomas Berdych had
a chance to do last night in Toronto, and Federer, after playing the first set with mission-like conviction, managed to come within once service hold, two points,
and a blind-stab volley from letting him do it.
Along the way, the surprisingly inappropriate Toronto
fans—“Are you nervous, Berdych?” one called out as he was about to serve in the
third-set tiebreaker—were given an exhibition in the lightning pace of modern
men’s tennis. The match was the same type of roller coaster of smoked forehands and high anxiety that the
two rode earlier in the year in Key Biscayne. After trying to let Berdych
self-destruct at Wimbledon, Federer had come into this one vowing to take
charge—“I’ve got to be aggressive” was even more of a mantra for him beforehand than it normally is. While that’s the phrase that every player
uses—Nadal must have said the word “aggressive” 20 times in his presser
yesterday—you could tell that Federer meant it.
The match was body blow against body blow, corner to corner, forehand to forehand,
with neither guy backing off the baseline unless totally necessary. The one tactic that Federer was determined to play
throughout the match, mostly to his advantage, but at least once to his
detriment, was to wrong-foot the towering Berdych. For the most part, it
worked; Berdych can’t turn himself on a dime. But on his first break point at
3-5 in the third, Federer, looking at an open crosscourt, hesitated, tried to
wrong-foot Berdych again, caught the ball late, and shanked it long. It
almost cost him the match.
It should have cost him the match. Until that point, it appeared that we were seeing the official establishment of a
new Tomas Berdych. Toe to toe with Federer, he was the bigger hitter and the
better player. It was a battle of strengths: The speed of Berdych’s shots vs.
Federer’s speed in tracking them down and punching them back, and Berdych had been winning that battle in the third. But
with it all on the line, the old Berdych, the bad Berdych, the original
Berdych, who knows, maybe the real Berdych, returned. He visibly pressed on his
first serve, he rushed points, and, hesitating, he came around a split-second
late on forehands that had been clipping the lines two games earlier. In a
four-deuce game, he never reached match point.
To paraphrase Dennis Green, was this a case of, “He was who he
thought he was”? In that moment, yes, the old Berdych had reared his anxious
head. But I thought that the bigger story of last night was not only Federer’s continued vulnerability before the final rounds, but the rise of Berdych to
elite status. For long stretches, he was the cleaner ball-striker, and there was little to choose between him and Federer in any aspect of the game.
It seemed that Federer was thinking along the same lines.
What struck me most about his post-match comments was the Nadal-like level of respect
he showed for Berdych. Federer said he’d gotten lucky, that Berdych had pushed
him all the way, and that he was finally fulfilling the potential he’d seen way
back at the 2004 Olympics. What was surprising was that Federer went a step
further and admitted that late in the third set, with his losses to Berdych at Key
Biscayne and Wimbledon swirling through his head, he had actually expected to
come up short again.
Is this indicative of a new, post-dominance Federer mindset?
Or was it limited to this particular player? I’m guessing the latter. Federer
played a tight first set, and he had chances to finish it in the second. His most stunning lapse came when he was serving at 5-6 in the
second. Federer double-faulted twice, hit a weird late forehand long,
and shanked a backhand into the stands to give away the set. He said that
the changing light at dusk may have had an effect, and Berdych also doubled twice in
one game around the same time. And
it probably did have an effect. But that series of screw-ups reminded me of
many of Federer’s matches with Nadal, when, seemingly in control, Federer had suddenly given back a break, or a set, or a series of break points.
Which takes us back to Federer and making a stand. After
dealing with challenges and losses to Nadal and Murray and Djokovic over the
last five years, Federer is now dealing with one more, from Berdych. It’s no
surprise that he wanted that win badly last night, and that given new life in
the third, he took it by playing a practical and intelligent tiebreaker that
just nosed him across the finish line—Federer was, once again, who we thought he was. And it really shouldn’t be all that
surprising that even the Greatest would have his doubts that he could get it
done. Maybe it isn’t that Federer has lost a step. Maybe older players in general
don’t lose steps, and that phrase is just a phrase with no real-world meaning.
Maybe it’s just that younger, talented players eventually gain a few steps, and one
more has gained a few on him.
