Tennis Forever

[Arvind Srinivasan]

What, no comments? Yesterday's match just came out of nowhere. Even if grass does bring Fed closer to the rest of the Big Four, yesterday was ridiculously awesome. The Fed of old, not the old Fed, came back in style. He has beaten Murray in all but one of their slam meetings but this time, he just battered him. Murray simply crumbled under the relentless pressure of the Fed onslaught of robotic big serving and brutal aggression from the ground. Fed actually made more groundstroke winners than Murray, by a margin of 13-6 on the forehand side. That just about says it all. It was way closer than the scoreline suggests and Murray played almost flawless tennis. A telling reminder to Fed's detractors that he didn't just fluke those 17 slams, he earned them with out of the world tennis. Now if only Gasquet had pulled off a French leap. Still, if Fed plays like this on Sunday, he does have a great shot at no.18.

Yes. But would he. These sort of performances arise only once. It would be unjust to expect a 34 old tennis player to do it again. But this match must have given him immense satisfaction and confidence. I am sure he's going to start confidently tomorrow. Another interesting thing is how Djokovic-Federer have split matches for the last 9 meetings. Djokovic -5 and Federer-4. Is it Federer's time to equalise?