Quick and painless
Federer reaches final after Chung retires with blisters
MELBOURNE, Australia — It took just more than an hour for Roger Federer to fix one anomalous statistic in his extraordinary career.
Federer, who was winning 6-1, 5-2 when Hyeon Chung retired in the second set of their Australian Open semifinal Friday night, is within one win of repeating as the tournament’s champion and earning a 20th Grand Slam singles title.
But going into Friday’s match, Federer was just 6-7 in semifinals at Melbourne Park. After 1 hour and 2 minutes under the closed roof at Rod Laver Arena, he improved that mark to .500 — it’s but still well below his semifinals showings at the other majors: 11-1 at Wimbledon, 7-3 at the U.S. Open and 5-2 at the French Open).
It wasn’t how Federer expected to advance.
“You do take the faster matches whenever you can because there’s enough wear and tear on the body,” he said. “The thought process is not like ‘What would have been better?’ That’s why this one feels bittersweet. I’m incredibly happy to be in the finals, but not like this.”
Chung tried everything to disguise the pain of the raw patches on his left foot. The South Korean player’s agent described them as “blisters under blisters under blisters.”
Federer knows the feeling. He also sensed something wrong with Chung’s movement.
“I’ve played with blisters in the past a lot, and it hurts a
lot. And at one point, it’s just too much and you can’t take it anymore — you can’t go on,” Federer said. “He’s played such a wonderful tournament, so credit to him for playing so hard again today.”
Federer’s conversion rate for finals in Australia is much better — the only time he lost a championship match was in 2009 against Rafael Nadal. So he’s well poised for Sunday’s match against No. 6-seeded Marin Cilic, who has had an extra day of rest. Then again, Federer was hardly taxed on Friday.
The final will be the 36-yearold Federer’s record seventh at the Australian Open — breaking the mark he held with Novak Djokovic, who went out in the fourth round this week — and
30th at a Grand Slam.
Cilic was hampered by blisters when he lost to Federer in last year’s Wimbledon final, but the 29-year-old has made a relatively pain-free run through the other half of the draw, including a quarterfinals win over an injured Nadal.
Even if Chung had been fit, he was trying to reach his first ATP World Tour final against a player who has won 95 titles, 19 of them Grand Slams. Still, Chung had an incredible run at Melbourne Park, becoming the first from his country to reach a semifinal at a tennis major and attracting plenty of attention for beating No. 4-seeded Alexander Zverev in the third round and Djokovic, a six-time winner of the tournament, in
the fourth.
But it took a toll. He needed a pain-killing injection before the match and a medical timeout to re-tape his left foot after going down a break in the second set. He played only two more games before he quit.
Afterward, Chung believed he did the “right thing,” saying a bad performance because of injury is “not good for the fans.”
“I really hurt,” he explained. “I can’t walk no more.”
Federer predicted a bright future for the 21-year-old. Chung also believed the experience will prepare him better for the rigors of best-of-five-set tennis at Grand Slams.
“For sure,” he said. “… I can play better and better in the future.”