Greatness is all about throwing the monkey off your back, or should we say groin this time, considering Roger Federer fought off his below the belt perch at the Australian Open quarter final with the strokes of a master.
Greatness is perseverance against all odds, patience in the face of impossibility and the ability to reach the finish line as a victor when even the commentators have begun to recite elegies.
That was Federer for you with all his vintage staycathon on display when he went on to win the quarter final against an aggressive American, saving seven match points to take the match full stretch. This, despite a stiff groin hampering his stride and stretch of imagination in dealing with the situation at 6-3, 2-6, 2-6 and seven match points in the fourth set.
It was, indeed, the return of the Federer of yore when he had the mind space and the power of youth to tower over the game as the ultimate escape artist from all but lost situations.
Here too, even as Tennys started salivating over the possibility of entering a grand slam semifinal first time ever, that too on the biggest stage against the biggest man in tennis, Federer showed how at 38, he is still the man among the boys.
After a medical break, and when Tennys was all set to finish him off in style, feeding ravenously on his injury, Federer nibbled back the game shot by shot point by point and defeated not just the demons in his body but also in his mind to take the match on five sets when logically it should have been all over in fourth with his opponent at the helm. Four match points in the games of set No 4 turning it into a tie breaker and then saving three more in the tie breaker when the Federer body language suggested he had given up, had the fans in another level of ecstacy. It also meant Federer has finally sorted out the chemical locha in his mind which has, so far, stopped him at the 20th slam title for some years.
Does it mean this brand of Federer is through to the Final? Federer is sceptical and said he felt extremely lucky to have downed the American. He humbly submitted that he did not deserve this victory and that he would have been packed off to Switzerland to skii had Tennys not lost his nerve.
Nothing can be farther to truth than this because it was a tenacious comeback by the swiss.
He is through to the semis now where the smiling and unbreakable assassin waits for him.
No groin or unforced errors or any other chink can work against the Serb and no one knows it better than Federer himself.
