Me’ as Fed flummoxed
won in two tie-break sets]. So clearly something is wrong how I return him.’’
This was a contest between the youngest man left in the tournament and the oldest, their birthdays separated by 17 years. After the match, McEnroe spoke to Tsitsipas about the ‘‘changing of the guard’’. But when this was put to Federer, he sounded slightly peeved.
‘‘Yeah, sure,’’ Federer scoffed. ‘‘He’s in front of the mic a lot. He’s always going to say stuff. I love John. I’ve heard that story the last 10 years. From that standpoint, nothing new there.’’
For many, Tsitsipas’s performance brought back memories of Federer’s own moment of self-revelation. In the summer of 2001 he dethroned Pete Sampras on the Centre Court at Wimbledon.
We went from Pete the Serve to Roger the Great, and who is to say that the next monarch of the game might not be Stefanos the Deep?
Tsitsipas is a loner, a Greek philosopher who admits that he has few friends in the locker room, but whose favourite activities involve photography and video production.
‘‘It’s better going outside and creating something rather than just sitting inside playing video games,’’ he told one recent interviewer. ‘‘There’s a lot of things out there to discover.’’
To return to that parallel with 2001, Federer needed a while longer to adapt to expectations, eventually opening his grand-slam account at Wimbledon two years later.
And one suspects that Tsitsipas, for all his obvious talent, might not be ready to take this title.
Admittedly, he will probably have more power left in his legs than his quarter-final opponent Roberto Bautista Agut, whose five-set victory over Marin Cilic, 6-7 6-3 6-2 4-6 6-4 was his third such lung-buster in the space of four matches.
But he could potentially wind up having to beat Nadal – who cruised through yesterday in just 125 minutes
6-0 6-1 7-6 over Czech Tomas Berydch– and Novak Djokovic in successive matches. To take out one member of the ‘‘Big Three’’ is extraordinary in itself; to complete the set would be all but impossible.
Tsitsipas and Bautista Agut both earned their first appearance in the quarterfinals of a slam, and so did American Frances Tiafoe, who overcame Grigor Dimitrov 7-5 7-6 6-7 7-5 with a quite stunning performance on his 21st birthday.
The stats reveal that this is now Federer’s longest run without a grandslam semifinal since he was 21.
Questions will inevitably circulate about his future, but he confirmed yesterday that he plans to play the French Open for the first time since
2015.
Meanwhile Rafael Nadal says leading female players deserve to win more prizemoney than their male counterparts, provided they draw greater ticket sales than the men.
Having breezed through to his 11th Australian Open quarter-final Nadal was asked about comments from Serena Williams who is pushing for equal pay for men and women at all tournaments. Men and women already earn equal prizemoney at the four grand slams.
Nadal was reluctant to buy into issues of gender, but suggested that he would have no problem if women were to earn more than men.
"I don’t know why you are trying all the time to create these kind of stories on this thing. As you know, I love women’s tennis," Nadal said.
Telegraph