Three of the world’s top four are suddenly finding life on the tour very precarious. Roger Federer’s shock defeat at the hands of Tomas Berdych in the fourth round of the Sony Ericsson late Tuesday night simply followed a pattern.
In the year’s first two ATP Masters Series 1000 events at Indian Wells and here at Key Biscayne, Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have all suffered early exits. Only Rafael Nadal has looked near his best and even he could not make the final at Indian Wells. But at least he is still alive here.
Federer, who went down 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 had no real explanation and admitted to being confused: “Look, it’s no secret that I’ve struggled in the last five matches I’ve played in the States,” he said afterwards. “It’s disappointing. I fought as much as I could under the circumstances with my game having issues at the moment.”
“Issues” is, of course, the new trendy camouflage name for “problems,” and Federer’s seem to be quite big.
“I definitely lacked timing,” he said. “I don’t know where that comes from because I was playing so nicely in Australia. Maybe the sickness took more out of me than I thought. I’m a bit confused with how I’m hitting the ball. Sometimes it flies and sometimes it doesn’t.”
If Roger Federer doesn’t know how he is a hitting a tennis ball, that is a problem. He says the solution is to work harder on the practice court and look forward to the change of surface onto European clay, where there is a bit more time to work things out.
The match itself was a thriller which ended after 2 hours, 51 minutes soon after midnight on a chilly evening that had Mirka Federer all wrapped up in a shawl looking increasingly concerned. Her husband seemed to be cruising at 3-1 in the first set but he threw all that away with a stream of backhand errors and the standard of tennis did not fit the occasion until midway through the second.
Then battle was joined with Federer going after the huge Berdych serve so persistently that the tall Czech needed 9 minutes, 30 seconds to hold serve for 4-3 and 12 minutes to hang on at 5-4. Oddly, considering all the deuces, Federer only had one break point and lost it with another of those netted backhands.
Berdych mistakes made life easy for the Swiss in the second set tiebreak, which he took 7-3, but Federer was soon behind in the third set as Berdych utilized his fluent and powerful forehand to break for 2-1. But Federer was still in it when Berdych let go of his serve in the eighth game with a double fault and, at 6-5, the world No. 1 was only two points away at 15-30 on the Czech serve. And he got closer than that when when Berdych missed a forehand by a millimeter in the breaker to give Federer match point on his serve at 6-5.
This, we thought, surely must be it. Not since the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens had Berdych beaten Federer, and he had lost to him on nine successive occasions since. Even a two set to love lead against the future champion at the Australian Open in January had not proved to be enough, so the chances of the 20th-ranked Czech surviving a match point on the Federer serve seemed slim.
But we were underestimating Tomas. Undaunted, he went for another pounding forehand and scored cross court with a clean winner. What a shot! Another great forehand forced a backhand error out of Federer on the next point and the perplexed and confused world No. 1 wasted all his night’s toil by hitting a forehand long at 6-7 to hand Berdych the best victory of his career. You couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it.
