What a great and spectacular match! These two players made us remember once again why we love tennis (well.. we have never really forget that!).
Even if the match wasn’t of an incredible quality (especially at the beginning) their way to interpret tennis is just wonderful. From one side we had Tsonga with his explosive tennis, on the other the Swiss Maestro that is getting even better with the age.
If Murray was wondering why this two had the privilege of the prime time and the centre court… well we think he had the answer!
The Match 7-6(4) 4-6 7-6(4) 3-6, 6-3
Federer started quite well with an early break at the very first game. The Maestro played a really superlative tennis in the first 2 games to then implode a bit in the following ones. The first set wasn’t of a great quality comparing with the tennis Roger displayed in the first 4 matches, but it was good enough to get to the tiebreak where the Maestro won using all his experience.
Then Tsonga fought back to win the second set and to bring Roger to the tiebreak in the third. Once again Roger used all his mastery to take advantage an a big hole in Jo’s game: the backhand volley. A times the Swiss was defending against Tsonga coming to the net either blasting central shots at the body or putting sneaky low balls on the Frenchman backhand. That worked really well.
Tsonga managed to fight back once again in the 4th set to win 6-3. Then once again oger’s experience kicked in to take an early 4-1 lead in the decider. There was still time to waste an easy forehand drive volley that would have meant a 5-1 lead for Federer, and after a bit of tension the Swiss legend won the 5th set 6-3.
The match lasted 3 hours and 34 minutes.
From Tsonga
“I kept my level of concentration really high all times. He was very aggressive. He didn’t miss a lot in the fifth set. I mean, it makes a difference,” said Tsonga.
“I just gave my best today, so I’m proud of that. But I’m not happy to lose, and I already look forward to the next tournament, the next Grand Slam, to try another time. I sent a good message. I’m here, I’m playing well, so you can count on me in the next game.”
The good and the bad for Federer
Roger didn’t play neither a great match nor a lousy one. The service wasn’t great to blast only 6 aces (in 5 sets!), his break point converstion rate was once again terrible (4 breaks out of 18 break points), but he really played a solid game, he definately improved his return to serve on his backhand (often a huge weakness) and he was really effective at the net.
What was a bit worrying (thinking about his semifinal with Murray) was the fact that as soon as the rally was just a bit long he could win 10% of the points… and that’s not good.
Time to rest for the Swiss and to think about his next semifinal
