Roger Federer has played 2014 games in 2014 (what a coincidence this number isn’t it?). All games were very important for Federer’s season, but there was one that was pivotal for his rankings: his last game in Wimbledon.
What happened?
Roger lost the Championship after being broken in the 10th game of the 5th set after a spectacular come back in the Wimbledon final against Djokovic. (The final score was 6-7 6-4 7-6 5-7 6-4 )
In the 4th set the Maestro broke Nole when the Serbian was serving for the Championship (Djokovic was 5-3 up) and the Swiss saved also a Championship point the game after to bring the match to the decider. Everything looked set for an epic win for Roger that could have being the first player since 1948 to win Wimbledon after saving a championship point (the last one was Falkenburg)… but there was something more at stake.
Why was that game important?
Unfortunately (for Roger), the Maestro played a very sloppy game at the very end and that gave the Championship to Djokovic. So Nole got 2000pts out of it and Roger 1200pts.
The Serbian is currently leading Roger of 1585 points and that means that if Roger hadn’t lost that game (and the match), the Maestro would have being the world no.1 by now by 15pts. (OK… he still had to win the final…)
So you could argue that Roger was still lucky to be in the fifth set in that match or he really got out of prison when he saved 5 match points against Mayer in Shanghai, but that was definitely the game that Roger would have played once again if he could go back in time.
At that level it’s often about details isn’t it?
