Thursday, January 25, 2007

Federer vs. Roddick

Mats Wilander said on Eurosport that the second set of the Australian Open semifinal between Federer and Roddick was the best set of tennis he had ever seen by a single player, and at the end, he said it was the best match he had ever seen anyone play: 6-4, 6-0, 6-2, with Federer winning 15 of the last 17 games after being down (on serve) at 3-4 in the first set.

Well, I once saw a set at least the equal of Federer's second-set dismantling of Roddick (24 points to 6!): the fourth and final set of the French Open final between Gustavo Kuerten and Alex Corretja in 2001. Kuerten won the first 23 points of the set to go up 5-0, 40-0. Then a funny thing happened on match point: Corretja won three straight points to get back to deuce before Kuerten then won the last two to win the match. Point total for the set: 25-3. For the sake of completeness: the score of the match in the end was 6-7(0) 7-5 6-2 6-0. (I had forgotten that Kuerten lost the first-set tiebreak at love!)

And for the sake of rubbing it in for Roddick fans: Federer 13, Roddick 1. :-)

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