MELBOURNE, Australia—The man rocks the first weeks of Slams.
For 13 straight years, Roger Federer has reached the fourth round of the Australian Open. For 11 straight years, he has reached the Aussie Open semis. His best records reveal an astounding Lou Gehrig-like consistency. He reached 23 Grand Slam semis and 36 Grand Slam quarterfinals in a row. The Swiss man is like clockwork.
Certainly, today there would be precious little new or unexpected from the man with a (relatively) new racket, a new coach, and—so to speak—a new back.
But wait, didn’t Picasso once kick over a can of paint?
Didn’t Mozart’s canon in B-flat fall flat?
Didn’t Fred Astaire once stumble?
Plus, anything is possible, especially at this year’s Aussie Open, where a controversy on twirling is swirling. Americans have been winning big. Young Aussies are rising. Old Aussie faves have fallen, and two of the greatest competitors to ever step on court—Ms. Maria and Señor Nadal—narrowly escaped elimination.
Still, we could barely believe our eyes today. The smartest man in tennis suffered a dumb blunder. The most dominant player we know was hardly imposing.
The Mighty Fed was not mighty. Roger Federer struck out.
Stunned Aussie fans wondered, “How did it happen?” After all, for the second straight round, Roger was simply going up against a Italian journeyman. Federer’s matchup should have posed few problems. In his 11 years on the circuit, his foe, Andreas Seppi, hadn’t done much to “Seppi-rate” himself from the pack. Thirty years old and ranked No. 46, he was the epitome of a lean, athletic journeyman with a nice little beard and a fine backhand.
That usually doesn’t cut it against Fed.
Seppi hadn’t prevailed in any of his ten matches against the master, and he’d only managed to win one set.
But Seppi—who looks like a Mediterranean Viking, if there is such a thing—moved well, crafted points beautifully and fought hard to take the first set. Oh well, Roger had lost the first set the other day against Simone Bolelli, so no problemo.
Yet inexplicably, the usually flawless Federer made a bonehead move at 4-4 in the second set, when he froze and backed off a modest floater from Seppi that he could have bashed any which way. There are no double bogeys in tennis. It just seemed that Federer suffered one.
Then came the moment of the match.
Roger went up 4-1 in the second-set tiebreak. The man with a clutch 369-199 record in breakers was on the brink of gaining control. But Federer’s groundies were distinctly non-Federerian. His movement wasn’t explosive. His backhands found the alleys. He yelled out in frustration and stared at the sky. He clunked a forehand into the net—one of 55 unforced errors that eventually led to his demise.
Losing six of seven points, Federer dropped the tiebreak, 7-5. Ouch!
“I guess I won the wrong points out there today,” Roger—who actually won one more point than Seppi in the match—said afterward. “I knew how important that second-set tiebreaker was … it just broke me to lose that second set. It was a brutal couple of sets to lose.”
No kidding.
Still, the Aussie throng urged on the beloved champion. Statisticians noted Federer had come back to win from two sets down nine times. Broadcaster Richard Evans asked, “Coming from different sides of the Alps, which one of these two will first reach the peak?”
Federer briefly rallied to collect the third set, and soldiered on to force a tense, dramatic fourth-set tiebreak. But this was not the sublime imposing Roger we know so well. This was not the bright star that clinched the Davis Cup title this winter or impressed at the warm-up tourney in Brisbane.
Instead, Roger appeared slow; his footwork was suspect. He played cautiously and rarely went for the lines. Amidst Melbourne gusts, his shots sailed. His serve was unhappy. (We wondered: Was his back hurting?) And he undertook too many futile net charges that lacked conviction. He suffered nine double faults and faltered when he had break points in hand.
Whew! But having said all that, he had his chances, scoring three mini-breaks in the tiebreak.
But each time Seppi confidently broke back. and then he hit a shot for the ages—a stroke suggestive of the forehand down-the-line winner by Vasek Pospisil that gave him and Jack Sock last year’s Wimbledon doubles title over the Bryan brothers; or Novak Djokovic’s whoosh crosscourt return of serve when he was down match point against Federer at the 2011 US Open.
Tall and lanky, Seppi ran into the dark shadows of Rod Laver Arena to unleash a forehand blast that zipped by Federer, caught the sideline and, in a stunning flash, gave him a memorable 6-4, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 7-6 (5) upset; his first-ever victory over a top ten player in a Slam; a triumph that propelled him into the fourth round of a major for only the third time in his career.
Later, Seppi—who had to overcome 15,000 rabid Fed fans— said he tried to remain calm throughout the match and avoid dwelling on his miserable record against Roger.
In contrast, the Swiss—who had not lost in the Aussie Open third round since 2001—was left to report the obvious: “I’m on the plane and he’s not … I struggled today and he took advantage … margins are small, these things happen.”
So what went wrong? “I guess,” Roger recalled, “it was just an overall feeling I had today out on the court that I couldn’t really get the whole game flowing. You know, was it backhand? Was it forehand? Was it serve? It was a bit of everything.” Roger also revealed he had an uneasy feeling in his morning practice.
Similarly, tennis had an uneasy feeling about him.
Questions emerged.
Did his Davis Cup campaign take too much out of him? Has he lost his trademark explosiveness? And then there were those two old standbys: Will he ever win another Slam? Will the 33-year old ever quit this game?
We hope that day will never come. After all, when Picasso kicked over that can of paint, he just cleaned up and stroked another masterpiece. For every clunker Mozart composed, he gave us hundreds of wonders. Astaire’s long-ago foot fault was cut out of the film and tossed away.
Yes, our Roger had a wretched day at the office. But certainly, he will be back. After all, the man still loves this game—and this game still loves the man.
