The vital points of tennis - the ones that turn a match

I was going to try to ignore Roger Federer’s 16th Grand Slam victory in Melbourne yesterday as a kindness to my readers – but I’ve failed.

I could spend the next few paragraphs adding to the reams of adulation already heaped on the world’s greatest athlete – but what’s the point? Let’s just agree that it was a terrific performance and that for one and a bit sets, Federer played pretty close to a Platonic ideal of the game. 

Instead, I’ll concentrate on the point that signaled the start of this sublime episode.

Andy Murray is serving at 3-4. He loses the first two points of this vital game, but bravely and skillfully claws his way back to parity: 30-30. The set is now perfectly poised. Both men are playing well: Murray’s serve was broken right at the start, but he broke back immediately, and since then his constant changes of pace have forced an unusually high number of errors from his opponent. At the very least, honours even, and the match could go either way.

At this moment, when it seems quite feasible that Murray will end up with the Australian Open trophy, Federer unleashes a cross-court backhand shot from the Ad court. Murray is well-positioned for it, but the ball’s extravagant but scorchingly fast parabola creates an angle that forces him out of court to reach it. The glum Scot manages to send it back to where Federer is waiting - still deep in the Ad court – and the supreme Swiss unleashes a blistering backhand of astonishing accuracy down the line for a winner.

There are two more hours of tennis to go, with more breaks of serve, and a very tight tie-breaker. But to all intents and purposes, the match is over. The next point sees Murray’s serve broken and Federer serves out for the set. The fact that Murray managed four games in the second set is a testament to his skill and resilience: Federer was playing like a god. It wasn’t really till the third set that Murray let himself down: he had a 5-2 lead and squandered it through his old enemy – a lack of boldness.

I used to sneer when commentators spoke of a single point changing the course of a match: but ever since the classic 1980 Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon final, I’ve been a believer. After Borg lost the epic 4th set tie-break, when he must have wanted to nip off to the bog for a protracted blub, he went on to drop the first two points of his opening service game in the 5th set. Had he lost the next point, that would probably have been curtains, and his tennis-playing career would have effectively ended at the age of 25 - a year earlier than it did, following his defeat by McEnroe in the 1981 final. 

But somehow, from somewhere, Borg remembered who he was and where he was and what was at stake, and won that opening game. After that, he proceeded to win 28 out of 29 points on his serve to take the final set 8-6 and bag his fifth Wimbledon title in a row – a feat not equaled until Federer managed it in 2007.

Unleashing a great serve at 0-30 essentially won Borg that epic match.

When Tommy Haas had a point to go 5-3 up against Federer in the 3rd set at the French Open last year, having won the first two sets, Federer, who had played wretchedly till that point, unleashed an unreachable millimeter-perfect crosscourt forehand winner exponentially better than anything else he’d managed that afternoon: Tommy was a Haas-been and Roger was on his way to his record-equaling 14th Grand Slam (he’s on 16 now) and the career Grand Slam which Nadal had denied him for four years on the trot.

And, when the feast had finished, and the lamps had expired, we all knew it was down to that Federer forehand at 3-4 in the third.

I confidently predicted that Federer wouldn’t win the Australian Open. Mind you, after losing the 2008 Wimbledon final to Nadal, I predicted he’d never win another Slam. I will now blight his chances by making another prediction: Federer will win the French Open this year. Boris Becker reckons he won’t, because there are too many great clay court players out there. Bollocks, Boris! Given the state of Rafa’s knees, the man who has appeared in the last four finals is destined for his 17th Slam.