Да противодействаме на застоя..
http://
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/match-tough/two-points-that-defined-2009/article1407664/Monday, December 21, 2009
Two points that defined 2009 Tom Tebbutt
Seldom has there been a year in tennis when two points made such a huge difference – and both were won by Roger Federer.
The first occurred in the round-of-16 at the French Open when he served at 3-4, 30-40 and trailing Tommy Haas by two sets to love.
The second was during the Wimbledon final, again with him in a dicey situation, down by a set and facing set point with Andy Roddick serving at 6-5 (it had been 6-2) in the second-set tiebreak.
At Roland Garros, the match with Haas took on a greatly-magnified significance for Federer because the day before four-time defending champion Rafael Nadal had been upset by Robin Soderling. With the man who had eliminated him in each of the previous four years out of the way, Federer, 27, had the chance of a lifetime to win the one big title missing from his resume.
He played like he felt the pressure, and his forehand had let him down mightily all afternoon. But facing a point that would allow Haas to serve for the match, he circled around a Haas service return to his backhand, and whaled an inside/out forehand winner that landed perilously close (an inch or two) to the sideline. “When I made the forehand to save break point in the third set, I really felt it could be the turning point,” Federer said. “I was really relieved.”
He then proceeded to do what the French call “remettre les pendules à l`heure” (to put the clocks back on time). In other words, the normal order of things was soon restored and he went on to win 6-7 (4), 5-7, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 and, three matches later, become the 2009 French Open champion.
When Haas was asked how he made sense of how a ball could land so close to the line on such a big point, he could only say, “there’s no secret to why he’s been where he has been the last five years and what he has accomplished. So you just got to tip your hat and say, ‘that’s why he’s Roger Federer.’ ”
At Wimbledon, with Roddick ahead 6-5 in the second-set tiebreak, Federer was forced deep and wide to his forehand and desperately launched a shot that seemed a hybrid of a lob and passing shot. At the net and poised to put the ball away into the open court, Roddick mangled a high backhand cross-court volley wide.
Afterward, he said about the shot that would have given him a two-set lead, “there was a pretty significant wind behind him at that side. It was gusting pretty good at the time. When he first hit it, I thought I wasn’t gonna play it. Last minute, it started dropping. I couldn’t get my racquet around it. I don’t know if it would have dropped [in] or not.”
No one will ever know if Federer could have come back if Haas had broken him in that key eighth game of the third set. Similarly, it’s hypothetical to suppose Roddick would have carried on to win Wimbledon if he had taken a two-sets-to-love lead. He eventually lost 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14 after holding serve 37 times before finally losing it in the very last game.
Federer’s triumphs at Roland Garros and Wimbledon gave him his 14th and 15th Grand Slam titles, breaking Pete Sampras’s record of 14.
At Wimbledon, Roddick said about Federer, “He gets a lot of credit for a lot of things, but not a lot of time is it how many matches he kind of digs deep and toughs out. He doesn’t get a lot of credit for that because it looks easy for him a lot of the time. But he definitely stuck in there today.”
That day, and the day against Haas – and those two critical points – go a long way to telling the story of tennis in 2009.