What a match. WHAT A MATCH.
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It's almost a pity I couldn't bring myself to watch most of it, actually.
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I will always be a Federer fan, no matter what he's ranked or if he loses in the first round of every tournament he plays for the rest of his life. Federer the man is my hero - Federer the tennis player is obviously a large part of Federer the man, but it is the man who says, "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice," that is the object of my idolatry. But the fact that I like him for him and not because he wins everything doesn't mean that I don't get nervous as hell for him.
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I think I said in my post 'Why I Love Tennis' that the most nervous I have ever been in a tennis match was when Roger played Tommy Haas in the fourth round of the Australian Open two years ago. Wimbledon against Rafa last year probably ran a close second. But they've both been usurped, because I have never, ever, EVER been so nervous.
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I'm an actor. No matter how many times I go onstage, I still get stage fright. I used to do eisteddfods for speech and drama, and sometimes the nerves could be almost crippling. I would walk up and down the corridors backstage, my fingers in my ears, reciting my lines over and over again. There was this strange feeling like your legs weren't connected to your head, your heart would race, and every year I used to wonder why I put myself through it, when it caused me so much anxiety.
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I know why I put myself through Roger matches. The man is my hero. Not only is he amazing to watch, with his fluid strokes and incredible angles and ability to do just about anything, he's a lovely person to boot. Justin Gimelstob once described him as 'the perfect human being.' So Roger is the reason - but the nerves are, if anything, worse.
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I started gnawing my nails during the first set breaker, and I let out an ungodly shriek when Tipsarevic won it with that lob that Roger let go. The second set was painful, though I got a brief reprieve when Roger won it. Also, Channel 7 stopped covering the match and went to the news, so I was following the scores on the internet. Somehow, when you're not watching, you're not quite as involved.
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Not quite.
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And then the third set happened, and that is when the agony really began for me.
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Roger lost that set 7-5. It was on serve, and then he must have had a loss of concentration - Channel 7 picked up coverage at this point, but it was slightly delayed, and because I knew what was going to happen I couldn't bring myself to watch it. During the set, before the break, I went running. I figured if I went away, when I came back, Roger might have won the match and spared me a lot of pain. But almost as soon as I got back, the break happened. And the set was gone, and suddenly Roger was down two sets to one.
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Roger has not been down two sets to one in a Grand Slam match for longer than I can remember. Even that match against Tommy Haas, he was two sets to love up, then two to one, then two all. He was never actually down.
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I couldn't even bear to watch the scores for the fourth set. I had to get out. My backyard is pretty overgrown, and we've been intended to get someone in to mow and spray the weeds for ages. And these are serious weeds. We're talking big, spiky thorn-beast weeds, crosses between trifids and Audrey II. So what did I do?
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I went out and weeded. With my bare hands.
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I was out there for maybe twenty minutes. I didn't check the scores. I tried to distance myself from the tennis. Slowly, I became less and less nervous. I sort of had the sense that Roger was doing okay. I mean, I'm not claiming to have some massive psychic power here, but you know how you sometimes get feelings? Like you know the phone is going to ring and who it's going to be just before it happens? I had a feeling like that. But I kept pulling up the damn spiky weeds, just in case. If Roger was losing, if Roger had lost, I couldn't bear to know. Not yet. Not yet.
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So, with scratched and bleeding hands, I came back inside. And the Australian Open scores page says, 'No current matches in progress."
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My heart froze. I had been out there a while, but nowhere near long enough for two sets. One, yes, but two, definitely not. It couldn't be a rain timeout, because the roof was closed. Unless one of them was badly injured and retired, that meant that the match had only gone four sets.
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That meant Tipsarevic had won.
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My eyes filled with tears. "No," I said. "No." This wasn't possible. This was 2008. This was Roger's lucky year! (He's said often his lucky number is 8, because his birthday is the 8th of August.) He couldn't have lost!
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I was devastated. I was - I was almost angry.
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There was one big weed in the backyard that I had left. A weed that had grown to gargantuan heights (for a weed) that seemed to be composed entirely of thorns. You couldn't touch it without nearly cutting your hand off. But what did I do, in my rage, in my devastation?
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I took a garden stake and I whacked at that giant spiky weed, and I smashed the damn thing to bits. And then I dug up the roots (bare-handed) and threw it against the fence. I was too - I don't know what I was. Angry? Distraught? even to cry. I was destroyed.
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Eventually, I went back in. If Roger had lost, I had to at least know what the score was. I owed him that much.
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But his match wasn't in the completed matches list.
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Hope blossomed.
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I clicked back to the 'matches in progress' in page. And there it was.
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Roger had won the fourth, 6-1. It was 2 all in the fifth, on serve. He hadn't lost. He was still in it. He had risen above it. He had levelled the match.
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My hero lived again.
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And there I was, looking at my computer screen with my dirty, bleeding hands, and I was laughing, and I was crying, and... oh God, I still couldn't bear to watch the scores ticking over. I knew Channel 7 was showing it on a delay, but I sure as hell couldn't stand to turn it on until I was sure that Roger had won. Otherwise, I think I just might have given myself heart failure.
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I went back out into the backyard. I had pulled up all the scary spiky weeds I could find, but there was still grass growing in the garden beds where it didn't belong. I didn't care that my hands were bleeding. (Before anyone freaks out, it wasn't that bad. Just scratches.) I couldn't watch. My heart was in my throat. I was waiting for another feeling like I had had before, when I somehow knew that Roger was doing okay. (I had been right the first time, even though my computer had so cruelly betrayed me!)
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It didn't come.
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It was dark by now, and I had pulled up just about everything I could see. "Right," I said to myself. "Be sensible. It must be over by now. Roger's a champion. He must have pulled it out and won. And if he hasn't, that's not the end of the world. Your life will go on fine if Roger does not win this tennis match."
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But I still had this sick feeling in my stomach. I forced myself to look at the scores, even though I didn't want to.
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Six all.
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I had been banking on Tipsarevic fading after being totally shellacked in the fourth. But the man's got heart. (All cred to him, even though I'm always on Roger's side.) It was tight. So tight.
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There was still the possibility that Roger might lose.
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I still couldn't watch, though it was now too dark to take my frustrated, nervous energy out on the garden. I had this crappy chicklit book I've been reading, so I decided that I would read two chapters then check again.
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I read two chapters. That sick feeling hadn't gone away, but I made myself check. 8-7, Roger serving, looking like he was going to hold.
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Because I know many useless facts about Roger, I knew that the last time he had won an extended fifth set was that famous match with Sampras at Wimbledon in 2001, where he won 9-7. This, clearly, didn't help my nerves in any way.
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I decided to read another chapter.
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When I next checked, it was 8 all, Tipsarevic serving, 40-15.
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Another chapter it was.
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But I had barely read two pages when I had the feeling. It was like a little voice was whispering in my ear, 'Go, Jodi. Look now. Look NOW.' And obviously I was frazzled enough at this point to listen to all my little voices, and so I checked.
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8 all. Deuce. Tipsarevic serving. Advantage Federer.
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Wait... advantage Federer?!
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It was like my eyes were locked to that damn live scoring page. That little A next to Roger's name seemed to grow bigger and bigger, and then...
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It was a 40 again. Tipsarevic had brought it back to deuce. But I still couldn't move. I knew, without knowing how I knew, that this was it.
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And then the A came back! Advantage Roger! Break point!
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AND THEN HE WON THE GAME!
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9-8. Roger was serving for the match.
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I couldn't move. I was afraid that, if I moved, I would jinx it somehow.
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That final game, even though it was a pretty routine service game for Roger, seemed to take about nine hundred years. And when he won...
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I'm an actor. (As I've said...) I have very, very melodramatic tendencies. I fell to my knees... and really hurt myself, so I decided not to try that again. But it was like a great weight had been lifted from me. He won. He won. He won.
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He won.
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Channel 7 was still showing the match on a delay, and I watched it from 7 all through tears. God, I felt like an idiot. "It's only tennis," I told myself. But for me, it was more than that.
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Have you ever had a hero? Someone who you just worshipped, and wished you could make yourself over in their image? Roger Federer is that for me. I wish I could be a person like he is a person - he is a great, great champion, but he is humble, he is gracious, he is real. He is a lovely person. He has an incredible attitude to tennis and to life.
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And I so, so desperately wanted him to succeed. And when he did... I was overcome.
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It's lame, but I have a song that is my Roger song. 'Shimmer' by Shawn Mullins - "He's born to shimmer, born to shine, born to radiate." I made the mistake of listening to this song after the match and burst into loud, noisy tears.
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This man, this wonderful champion, is born to shine.
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And, in the end, I think this match will be good for Roger. Much as it was lovely to see him winning so easily over Hartfield and Santoro, I was a little concerned that he was peaking too early. Let people say he has no matchplay now. This match went for four and a half hours. Roger on fire is amazing, but knowing he can pull it out even when the hammer is down and he's down is even more amazing... even if I can't bear to watch it.
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What a great champion. He was serving second in that fifth set as well. If Tipsarevic had broken him, Tipsarevic would have won. Roger had to break THEN hold. And Tipsarevic has no pressure. No expectations. If Roger lost, that would have been the greatest upset of the tournament - which is saying something, in a 24 hours so peppered with upsets. Roddick, Chakvetadze, Gonzalez and Kuznetsova were among the seeds that lost. Grosjean nearly knocked off Blake. But Roger made it. He won.
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What was strange about the match is that, if you look at it on paper, Federer won easily. He had 96 winners to 64 errors, which is a great ratio. Tipsarevic was 52 to 47. Federer was serving better, he won 202 points to Tipsarevic's 173... and yet Tipsarevic somehow managed to hang on. It is a rare day that someone can serve at 64% winning 89% of points on that first serve and go to five, but it happened.
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I think this shows the quality of Tipsarevic's scrambling and his mentality. He won the points that he needed to. Federer obviously got more points on the Tipsarevic serve than vice versa, but Tipsarevic fended him off. A 24% break point conversion rate for Federer tells that story. So congratulations to Janko Tipsarevic, because that is an awesome effort.
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And congratulations to Roger Federer, more than anyone else, because it would have been so easy to let the pressure crush him, to tank, to let the weight of expectations beat him into the ground. But he is a true champion. He fights. Even though the chips are down, and he's sure not used to them being down, still he fights. He can adapt. He is prepared. He can go the distance, even where he is so rarely asked to.
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This man is a great tennis player. He is a great man. And after this match, this titanic struggle, I admire him even more than I did before.
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Australian Open Results - Day 6
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Men's Draw
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Roger Federer def. Janko Tipsarevic, 6-7 (5-7) 7-6 (7-1) 5-7 6-1 10-8
Marin Cilic def. Fernando Gonzalez, 6-2 6-7 (4-7) 6-3 6-1
Tomas Berdych def. Juan Monaco, 3-6 6-3 7-6 (7-5) 6-2
James Blake def. Sebastien Grosjean, 4-6 2-6 6-0 7-6 (7-5) 6-2
Novak Djokovic def. Sam Querrey, 6-3 6-1 6-3
Lleyton Hewitt def. Marcos Baghdatis, 4-6 7-5 7-5 6-7 (4-7) 6-3
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Women's Draw
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Venus Williams def. Sania Mirza, 7-6 (7-0) 6-4
Maria Kirilenko def. Anna Chakvetadze, 6-7 (6-8) 6-1 6-2
Ana Ivanovic def. Katarina Srebotnik, 6-3 6-4
Agnieszka Radwanska def. Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-3 6-4
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