After watching Novak Djokovic put in something that at least somewhat resembled an afternoon of hard work in getting past Kei Nishikori during the afternoon session at the 2014 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, Roger Federer was made to work a lot harder during semi-final number two against fellow countryman Stan Wawrinka.
In what was by far and away the finest match of the week, the Swiss Davis Cup teammates treated fans to some wonderful tennis from start to finish but in the end it was Federer who would prevail with a thrilling 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(6) victory to reach his tour leading eleventh final of the season.
The No. 3 seed used a punishing ground game to his advantage to grab an early break and rode that to an opening set win. While Federer played some solid tennis, he simply had no answer for the Wawrinka assault…especially when it came to what is arguably the finest backhand in the game today.
To his credit, the former seventeen-time Slam winner regrouped nicely and managed to break his opponent at love to take the middle set when it looked to be mere moments away from being decided via tiebreaker. With the crowd clearly behind him and all the momentum on his side, it appeared as though the No. 2 seed was well on his way to earning the fifteenth win of his career against his good friend.
Unfortunately for Federer, it was at that moment when the match appeared to turn in his opponent’s favour. Unaware that umpire Cedric Mourier had overruled a call on the opening point of the set Federer was stunned to find himself down triple break point. At that point the Swiss No. 1 approached Mourier wondering what was up but not surprisingly it proved to be a pointless endeavor.
Two points later Wawrinka had himself a break of serve and Federer was clearly not amused with his predicament, especially since the original call was actual corret. From that point, the twenty-nine year old looked to be in complete control, essentially breezing through one service game after another and Federer still chirping to the official about the missed call, it looked to be just a matter of time before he would complete the upset….funny how things can change within a matter of moments.
After fighting off a couple of break points to go up 5-3 and watching Federer hold with ease, Wawrinka had the match on his racket but his first serve picked the absolute worst possible moment to leave him. Despite having a trio of match points, he was unable to close the match out and just like that, we were back on serve.
In what was frankly a rather fitting way to end this one, it would eventually be decided in a tiebreaker and after surviving yet another match point, Roger Federer was able to book his ticket into tomorrow’s much anticipated finale and tennis fans across the world can hardly wait.
