That was a strange strange match!
On one side there was a rather tired Juan Martin Del Potro that was looking quite heavy on his legs; on the other there was Roger Federer that looked scared to death.
The beginning of the match was awful. Roger couldn’t put a ball in and Delpo was rallying waiting for the Swiss’ unforced errors. So in just 25 minutes the Argentine was leading 5-1 without doing much… life was nice for Delpo. Then Roger woke up and he started to find a decent tennis. The funny part is that with Juan Marting struggling with his movements, playing a “decent tennis” was definitely enough. So Roger won 3 comfortable games to get rather close to Delpo (5-4), but the Argentine hold serve after saving another break point. First set 6-4 for Juan Martin.
Roger was at that point in complete control of the rallies. His variations were just deadly for a tired Delpo that was particularly struggling to run forward (ok.. this is a general weakness of the Argentine). So… an easy second set for Roger? Not really… out of the blue the Maestro played another poor service game to be broken in the 3rd game. Finally Roger recovered to win the second set at an easy tiebreak (at 2).
At that point once again Roger was the guy with the upper hand and once again he was broken out of the blue to find himself 0-3 down in the decider. And again… the Maestro found some of his tennis, to recover and break Delpo twice. The third set ended 7-5. Match Stats.
Roger: I was angry
The Maestro during the match was upset by his performance to comment “I was probably slightly angry more than thinking it’s going to be over soon. It’s one of those moments today, because I kind of fought back the whole match – the first, second set. Here we go again.”
Delpo: I had my chances
Juan Martin was disappointed by the outcome of the match to comment “I think I got two chances to win the match. I broke his serve in the second set and in the third one. But he played great when I was up, and he deserved to come back in both sets. But at the end, when you have to be focus and find the winners, I made the mistakes and he was there really focused to take the chance. I think that was the key of the match.”
Next vs. Rafa
Roger qualifies once again for the WTF semis. This time he will play his “tennis nightmare”: Rafael Nadal. H2H the Spaniard leads Federer 21-10, but the Swiss is 2-0 on indoor hard courts. Well… the favourite is definitely Rafa especially if Roger doesn’t step up with his tennis (talking about continuity)… but the Maestro is just capable of everything. Game On!