This is What They Paid For: Federer's immortal win over Sandgren

Every US Open viewer knew the drill. When it rained, the tournament’s main broadcaster, CBS, would fill the downtime by replaying old faithful: Jimmy Connors’ five-set win over Aaron Krickstein in 1991, on his 39th birthday. The finger-pointing, the pelvic thrusts, the gold chain, the yellow racquet, the fists raised high, the lengthy towel breaks, the immortal words, “This is what they paid for, this is what they want.” By the 20th viewing, some of us had Jimbo’s entire act—which was essentially his last act—memorized. In any list of memorable matches and Grand Slam runs, Connors’ magically garish trip to the semis that year will always rank near the top.

At a certain point during Roger Federer's equally magical, but not quite as garish, 6-3, 2-6, 2-6, 7-6 (8), 6-3 win over Tennys Sandgren at the Australian Open last night, I realized that Federer is the same age as Connors was when he began the ’91 Open.

Back then, during those two weeks in New York, Connors became the center of the sports universe as he survived lengthy, dramatic battles against Patrick McEnroe, Paul Haarhuis, and Krickstein, all of which remain the stuff of tennis legend 30 years later. There was a feeling of utter amazement among all sports fans that a tennis player could compete with opponents who were a decade younger than he was. By the time it was over, and Jim Courier had quietly ended his run in the semis, Connors had landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Even Jimbo seemed a little amazed by what he was pulling off. After his wins, he would point toward the fans in all four sides of the stadium, telling them, essentially, “I could never do something like this without you.”

Federer, of course, hasn’t done any finger pointing in Australia. He hasn’t done much fist-pumping, either, and he certainly hasn’t talked into the camera. Federer didn’t even really celebrate after his win over Sandgren; after saving seven match points against the American, he likely didn’t want to rub it in. And his groin injury probably wouldn’t have let him anyway. Federer’s only (accidental) nod to the spirit of Jimbo came when he got caught cursing, possibly in Swiss-German, by a line judge.

Getty Images

With his five wins in Melbourne, and his Houdini acts against Sandgren and John Millman, Federer has brought sellout crowds in Rod Laver Arena to their feet. But no one has been stunned by it, and Federer almost certainly won’t be on the cover of Sports Illustrated next week because of it. Which isn’t surprising. At 38, Federer is ranked No. 3, 171 spots ahead of where Connors was in August 1991. He was a point from winning Wimbledon last summer. And he won the Australian Open as recently as 2018. The only reason Federer’s run to the semis isn’t mind-blowing is that we would never expect anything less from him.

Even if it ends against Novak Djokovic in the next round, though, Federer’s 2020 Aussie Open has been something special.

Despite not having played a match since November, Federer opened with straight-set wins over 30-year-old Steve Johnson and 27-year-old Filip Krajinovic. In the third round, he pulled off the Melbourne Miracle: Down 8-4 in the fifth-set tiebreaker against Millman, he won the last six points of the match. He did it with a subtle—I guess at Federer’s age, you can call it “wily”—tactical shift. After watching Millman hit two straight running forehand passes, Federer didn’t let him have a chance at another. Instead, he went to the drop shot, moved Millman around, and dared him to beat him from the baseline. The Aussie couldn’t do it.

And then there was the Sandgren match, which was even harder to fathom than the Millman win. By the start of the fourth set, Federer was down two sets to one, he appeared to have a problem with his groin, his first-serve speed was down in the 90s, he had been warned for an “audible obscenity,” and his opponent was rifling winners past him and breaking his serve virtually at will. Federer’s box of supporters didn’t look nervous; they looked glum, as if they knew the end was nigh.

The end was indeed nigh, but it never actually arrived. Sandgren reached match point seven times; seven times Federer survived. He didn’t save them the way he usually does, with unreturnable first serves. He escaped much the same way he had escaped Millman: By keeping the ball in play and forcing Sandgren to finish it. Until that stage, the American had been swinging freely and creating winners from all angles. But the final swing didn’t come as freely. He couldn’t quite pull the trigger on his match points, which, on a different day, might not have been a bad strategy; Federer’s doesn’t usually win by out-rallying his opponents. Except that this time, with the match on the line, he did. Groin injury or not, he didn’t miss, and eventually Sandgren did. The one time Sandgren made it to the net, Federer didn’t miss his passing shots, either.

“I feel a bit bad in a way because I didn’t feel like he did anything really wrong,” Federer said. “It’s just luck at some point. I’ve been on the other side, as well. These ones just sting, and they hurt. I could have blinked at the wrong time and shanked. That would have been it.”

But Federer didn’t blink, and he didn’t shank, and that wasn’t it. His 2020 Aussie Open—part Houdini, part Connors—continues, and his fans Down Under will do what they can to help him keep it going against Djokovic. Federer won’t say it, but it’s still true: This is what they paid for, this is what they want.