It was the match-up tennis fans around the world were dying to see and while Andy Murray played fairly well, it was the level of play on display from the man on the other side of the net that turned out to be the story of the night. Roger Federer managed to turn back the clock on Friday evening in Cincinnati, as the seventeen-time Grand Slam champion was at his clinical best in disposing of his long-time rival in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5, during quarter-final action at the Western and Southern Open.
Outside of a three game stretch early in set number two, Federer played near flawless tennis in reaching his ninth semi-final of the 2014 season. While Murray did match him shot for shot through much of the opening set, it was the Number 2 seed who came through with a break of serve at 2-2 that ultimately turned the set in his favor.
In his defense, Murray had already fought off six break points during his first two service games, but it was only a matter of time before the Swiss Maestro broke through. He would go on to close out the set with another break of serve and actually ended up winning 48% of the points on the Number 8 seed’s serve during the opening set.
The twenty-seven year old Brit looked to be well on his way to pushing this one to a deciding set, as Federer’s level of play slipped which allowed Murray to jumped out to an early 4-1 double break lead. Unfortunately for him, his game quickly started to unravel and Roger re-located his earlier form, which lead to the crazy turnaround that was about to occur.
In the blink-of-an-eye, the scoreboard went from reading 4-1 Murray to 5-4 Federer and suddenly the 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist was serving to stay in the match. While he managed to do exactly that to keep the set on level terms, he would not be so lucky the next time around as Federer broke him for the fifth and final time to close out the match.
With the win, Federer improved his career head-to-head mark versus Murray to 11-11 and will now look to keep his perfect record intact against Milos Raonic in Saturday’s second semi-final. The hard-serving Canadian has desperately wanted another crack at Federer since early July, when the seven-time Wimbledon champ absolutely schooled the kid in his ever Grand Slam semi-final appearance.
Raonic will get his wish on Saturday night, but expecting a different result from what we saw at the All England Club may be asking a little much, especially with the thirty-three year old playing at the level he currently is. With that said, with the sheer volume of upsets we have seen over the last couple of weeks in both Cincinnati and Toronto, nothing we see should shock us at this point and time.
