The Hindu : Sport : Safin ends Federer's winning streak

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 28, 2005

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Safin ends Federer's winning streak

By Nirmal Shekar

MELBOURNE, JAN. 27. Ladies and gentlemen, at last the mystery has been cracked and the truth is out. Roger Federer really does belong to our species — homo sapiens. The Swiss alchemist is human, vulnerable and beatable...but only just.

Amidst ever deepening suspicion that the No.1 tennis player in the world may be an evolutionary fluke taking his sport to a level unattainable by ordinary mortals, an enigmatic Russian with a hedonistic lifestyle produced an unforgettable Bohemian Rhapsody to remind us yet again that every great champion is invincible only until he is proved to be vincible.

But the proof did not come easy on a memorable night at the Rod Laver Arena in the Centenary Australian Open on Thursday. Marat Safin, on his 25th birthday, died a half dozen deaths before finally establishing Fantasist Federer's unmistakable human connection.

In a wondrously entertaining battle whose dynamic plotting would have appealed to Alfred Hitchcock had it been a movie script, Safin, seeded four, handed Federer his first defeat since the Athens Olympics last August, winning the epic semifinal 5-7, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6(6), 9-7 in four hours and 28 minutes.

So improbable were the twists and turns in a match so full of expression and replete with power, grace and beauty — and one that produced esoteric watching pleasure — that even after Safin hit a forehand winner into the open court on his seventh matchpoint, with Federer having slipped at the other end of the baseline, for a long pregnant few seconds the crowd failed to react, unwilling to believe it was all over.

Streak ends

Safin's victory ended the Swiss supremo's 26-match winning streak and it was Federer's first loss to a Top Ten player since going down to Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain in the Masters Cup in Houston in 2003.

Playing with the sort of composure that is as alien to him as a meal of green salad might be to an African lion, Safin surprised himself, the audience and his outrageously gifted opponent as he played a wonderfully creative and timely lob to save a matchpoint in the fourth set tiebreak and then never let the frustration get to him on losing a soul-shattering series of six matchpoints in the decider.

"No matter how many matchpoints you have, you have to be careful. It is Roger Federer on the other side. There is a lot of psychological pressure,'' said Safin on making his third Australian Open final. "I was lucky with that lob. Hopefully I can recover and fight well in the final.''

If he fights as well as he did today, Safin will surely have a better chance of winning on Sunday than he did in his last two finals here. For, to come back from two sets to one down and 5-2 down in the fourth set tiebreak and finally beat Federer is an astonishing achievement.

Authoritative

Federer had some trouble with a nerve in his serving arm and battled blisters in his feet as well but Safin's tennis was mostly authoritative and he served with great confidence under pressure.

"I thought I played well under the circumstances and had my chances in the fourth and fifth sets but he was fresher in the end,'' said Federer who actually won seven more points than Safin (201-194) in the match.

Federer had a matchpoint on serve at 6-5 in the fourth set tiebreak and Safin's first matchpoint came in ninth game of the decider. The Tartan Tornado let slip two in that game, one more in the 10th and two more in the 14th before wrapping up the contest on his seventh matchpoint in the 16th game.

"I was not playing against an ordinary player. It was not easy,'' said Safin.

Trysts with history seldom are.

Serena fired up

Earlier in the day, you might have wondered if you had sleep-walked your way into the Melbourne Zoo rather than the Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne Park. Ear-popping, primordial noises that are a part of everyday life in the Serengeti plains in Tanzania rang out as a welcome note as two of the loudest competitors in women's tennis staked their claims for a place in the final.

Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova could have woken up a statue with their loud grunting and groaning. But their competitive intensity could have hardly been questioned. And it was obvious too that Serena is hungry again. After a little more than nine months during which her performances may have suggested that the great fire that she stoked inside to catapult herself to Grand Slam glory was being reduced to embers, the former world champion has clearly shown us here this fortnight that she is ready to re-invent herself as a champion of substance.

Nothing she has done in recent times may have helped underline her desire to scale again the familiar peaks of the past as did her the Great Escape that she authored today to outlast her Wimbledon conqueror Sharapova 2-6, 7-5, 8-6 in two hours and 39 minutes.

After being outplayed by the fourth-seeded Russian diva for a set and a half, Serena, champion here in 2003 and seeded seven, raised her game to suit the needs of the occasion — and with it, the decibel level of her grunting even as Sharapova toned down herself.

Pumping fists, slapping her thighs, squealing like a porcupine trapped in a barn door, screaming and jumping like a springboard diver before a dive, the American broke back to 5-5 in the second set when Sharapova first served for the match and fought off three matchpoints in the 10th game of the decider when her 17-year-old opponent served for the match a second time.

In the 13th game, Serena courageously staved off three breakpoints, and two adrenaline-charged backhand winners featured the next game in which Sharapova lost serve, and with it the match. But the key to Serena's success today was her willingness to charge the net on the big points. She won 23 of 32 points she played at the net and this clearly unsettled an opponent prowling the baseline all the time.

Serena's final opponent Lindsay Davenport needed to draw on all her experience to overcome the gritty Frenchwoman Nathalie Dechy 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4, coming back from a set and 4-1 down in the second set tiebreak, in the second semifinal. It is the top-seeded American's first Grand Slam final appearance since the U.S. Open five years ago.

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