The Revival of Roger Federer

When Roger Federer was asked to assess his 6-7 (4), 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9), 6-3 win over Marin Cilic in the Wimbledon quarterfinals on Wednesday, the first words out of his mouth were, “A lot happened out there.”

That’s one way of putting it.

Amid everything that happened during its three hours and 17 miniutes, amid all of the clutch serves and double-clutched returns, the 27 aces hit by Federer and the 23 hit by Cilic, the 67 winners hit by Federer and the 59 by Cilic, the in-by-a-millimeter Hawk-Eye challenges, the nerve-jolting ping-pong volley exchanges, the out-of-nowhere backhand passes threaded up the line, the glimpses of Cilic's coach, Goran Ivanisevic, trying not to watch, and Federer's wife, Mirka, willing her husband on, one shot stays in my mind.

Or, I should say, one sprint. One desperation sprint and hack at a forehand. It came at the pinnacle of the match, with Federer and Cilic deadlocked at 9-9 in the fourth-set tiebreaker. If Cilic won the rally, he would have his fourth match point, and the first on his serve. If Federer won it, he would have his fifth set point—in this circumstance, a virtual match point of his own.

Federer served, but Cilic grabbed the upper hand with a deep return, and he pushed Federer back with his next shot. For the better part of three sets, Cilic had been winning rallies like this one, with heavy hitting from the baseline. Now it looked like he had found one more big shot when he needed it: He pummeled a backhand down the line, and it appeared for a second, as it skidded through the grass, to have won him the point.

Except that, this time, Federer didn’t let it. He turned into a blur of white as he flew to his right and reached out to chop a forehand back. As with so many of Federer’s desperation gets over the years, he didn’t just put the ball back over the net, he put it in a position that was just a little uncomfortable for his opponent. The ball buzzed crosscourt and stayed low; Cilic, forced to pull up to get it back over the net, sent his forehand just wide. Federer never trailed again.

“It was about staying in the match,” said Federer, who came back from two sets down to win for the 10th time in his career, “somehow hoping for his level to drop a little bit, and a get a little lucky, and that’s exactly what happened.

“I knew I was in so much trouble in the third set and the fourth...I fought well and played super great at the end.”

Federer was down, but he could still, as he said, “hope” for a comeback. The seven-time Wimbledon champion knew that even if he never found his best level, he still had his name, his reputation and his serve. He knew that it would be unusual for Cilic not to suffer a nervous hiccup while trying to close him out on Centre Court. Federer could also count on tennis’ uniquely torturous scoring system to make it just a little more difficult for Cilic. In this sport, it’s not enough to win the majority of the points over three sets. You must also win the point—the backbreaker—and you must do it, at some stage, on your opponent's serve. That was the one thing Cilic couldn’t do.

At 3-3 in the third set, Cilic led 0-40 on Federer's serve. Two points later, at 30-40, Federer spun in a second serve, but Cilic shanked the return wildly. It was the beginning of a pattern. Serving at 1-2 in the fourth set, Federer fell behind 15-40, but Cilic missed two straight second-serve returns. With Federer serving at 4-5 in the fourth, Cilic reached match point, but again he couldn’t put a second serve back in the court. Finally, when Cilic reached 7-6 in the tiebreaker, his third match point, he missed yet another second-serve return into the net. Cilic had been winning the rallies, but he couldn’t get himself into one when it mattered most.

“[I would] try to be more aggressive on the chances when I had them in the fourth,” a composed Cilic said later when asked if he had any regrets about how he played. “Maybe there was a slight hesitation in some of them, obviously the situation I was in made it big, so I was not getting the best out of me.”

Federer hadn’t played a fifth set since he saved match points on his way to beating Gael Monfils in the quarterfinals at the 2014 U.S. Open (two days before losing to Cilic in the semis). But he ran away with this one.

“I don’t think he’s slowing down,” Cilic said with a half-smile afterward.

If Federer goes on to win his 18th major at Wimbledon, his Houdini act on Wednesday will be remembered forever. Even if he doesn’t, the fourth-set tiebreaker will join two others that Federer won on this court—against Rafael Nadal in the 2008 final and Novak Djokovic in the 2015 final—as classics of that cut-throat genre.

For edge-of-seat drama, this breaker may have been the best of the three. What were you doing during those 20 points? Were you, as British journalists like to say, hiding behind the couch as Federer served to stay alive? Were you glued to your lucky chair as Cilic saved himself with a stunning pass? Were you standing an inch from the screen as Federer made a half-hearted challenge that turned out to be correct? Did you bury your head in a pillow when Federer flipped the easiest of forehands long on set point? Could you even bring yourself to watch? Even if you couldn’t, you knew that it’s for moments like these that we do watch.

Federer started his post-win interview by saying, “A lot happened out there.” He finished it with an equally accurate description:

“Obviously the breaker was crazy. It was an incredible match.”