Laver Gives it an "E"

At every tournament, the most enterprising reporters take to the hallways after a match, looking for people to bushwhack for a quote here, a choice anecdote there. This is what we did again after Roger Federer's performance tonight against Andy Roddick in semifinals. The Mighty Fed played lights-out ("full-flight", as some of you like to put it) tennis, hitting winners that I won't demean with inadequate description, because any description would be inadequate. There's prose, poetry, and poetry-in-motion, and many of the shots TMF hit were poetry-in-motion, without the encumbrance of words. You get the idea. You'll see the tape.

Anyway, Ken Meyerson was grumpy, and trying to float the idea that Andy didn't have a good night (I'd say!). He can be forgiven; he's Andy's agent, and therefore born to serve. Tony Roche, lean and tanned, his face looking as craggy as something just carved off a promontory in North-west Australia, was his usual, phlegmatic self, allowing that Roger "had a good night" while Andy's train was traveling in the opposite direction.

Heinz Gunthardt, who used to coach Steffi Graf and now covers tennis for Swiss television, grinned broadly as he approached me. He had just interviewed Roger for his network, and had asked him if he felt like breaking into a grin at the start of the third set. Roger told him, "No, actually I was quite nervous. After that second set, I was worried that maybe my level could go down, and I didn't want to lose my concentration at that point to let him back in the match."

Heinz laughed out loud. "Can you believe that?"

About this, Federer was entirely right: his level could have gone down, because it certainly could not have climbed much higher.

While we worked the hallway, still shell-shocked by what we had just witnessed, TMF was huddled in the locker room with a guy who, more than any man, might have understood his plight at the beginning of the third set: Rod Laver. And what did the Rocket think of TMF's performance? Federer would tell us later, grinning in spite of himself. "He said it was excellent."

It's nice to know that words can fail Rod Laver, too!

The red-hot core of Federer's demonstration - for that's precisely what it was - was a stretch starting early in the second set, when he won 13 points in a row, and 16-of 17. Of those 16, nine were clean winners. This, against an opponent who came into the match with a big game and a big attitude, justified by a waxing game. And he got waxed.

Who would have thunk that Roddick would lose more service games than he won in a five-set match on a fast surface?

And if you have trouble believing that TMF was concerned, in that I've-got-nothing-to-smile-about- even-though-I'm-slaughtering-this-guy kind of way, heed the intel I gleaned from TW's loyal friend Miguel Seabra. In his French-language press conference, TMF repeated the word "fear" more times than anyone expected as he described what he had expected as match time approached.

In fact, Federer took Roddick's recent resurgence so seriously that he chose to play possum in their recent exhibition-match meeting at Kooyong (which Roddick won). He came to the net frequently in that match, partly because he didn't want to give Andy too good a look at the kind of game he would trot out tonight. TMF hit a surprisingly high number of sliced backhands at Kooyong, not just because of their value as approach shot. He was sandbagging Roddick, as he plotted to rely more heavily on the flat or topspin shots here. And did I mention that TMF and Roddick had practiced at least once here at Melbourne Park, with Andy tagging TMF, four-and-four?

The fear, it turns out, was bio-fuel for the raging machine of Federer's genius. Here's something for you stats freaks: Andy Roddick won 45 points in this match; Roger Federer hit exactly the same number of winners. And Andy had a significantly higher first-serve percentage: 63 per cent to 51. Note to Andy: do not, ever, examine the box score to this one.

From the hallways, we drifted to the press interview room. I saw one of my all-time favorite players, Mats Wilander, and went over to chat with him. It's one thing for me to suggest that this was the greatest single performance I had ever seen in men's tennis, when you consider the event (a Grand Slam), the stage (semifinal), and the opponent (a former No. 1, still at the peak of his game). It's quite another for one of TW's favorite nouns to say the same thing. But that's just what Mats thought, too. What would Roger say in his presser, we wondered. Mats suggested that he TMF should just walk in and say, "Okay guys, why don't you just write what you want and pretend I was here talking to you."

Yet even a demonstration of these proportions offers up some food for thought and academic excercises. Mats thinks it's suicidal to hit a crosscourt approach shot to Federer's forehand and come to net; diagramming the play in the air, he convincingly argued that it was physically impossible to race from the corner of the court to the net and get there before TMF can uncorked a whistling forehand passing shot.  "You have to be nuts to attack Roger's forehand in any event," Mats said. "The best chance you have is to try to make him hit high backhands." The problem with that, in this context, is that Andy has been flattening out his game in hopes of beatin - you get the drift.

Andy's presser was a gem; early on, he was so tight-lipped that it seemed like things might get really ugly. But, thankfully, it went the other way - make sure you read it at the Australian Open website. One of the many highlights: Ublado Scanagatta, an Italian blogger and chief tennis correspondent for La Nazione, observed that Andy's performance in the presser was better than his performance on court.

Andy replied, "No shit. If there were rankings for press conferences, I wouldn't drop out of the Top Five, I'd hope."

Andy put a brave face on it with gallows humor. But you got a sense of what a metallic taste the entire experience left in his mouth on one of the occasions when he sucked it up and answered a painful question directed at his recent mantra, which has been that since the U.S. Open final, the gap between himself and Federer might be closing rather than widening.

For his outstanding effort in the presser, Roddick got a round of sympathetic applause when he left the interview room - a spontaneous sign of respect that is frowned upon by the more pious and self-important members of the press corps, tolerated by those who actually have a heart. Even so, this spontaneous outpourings of sleazeball press love is usually reserved for the winner of a major final. It was a poignant moment.

Roger came in shortly thereafter, looking as jaunty as he appeared to feel. He even wore his baseball cap backwards, although I wouldn't recommend mistaking him for Robby Ginepri in any other aspect. He faced what has become an increasingly daunting task for TMF: being appropriately modest  as well as honest. I don't know how you feel about it, but I've got no use for false modesty.

So TMF merrily walked us through his half-concluded highlight reel. When he was asked if he might lay claim to the GOAT title, He replied:

Mikey Seabra asked Roger which of the icons of the game he would be most interested in playing, and he replied, Laver and Bjorn Borg. Seabra followed up (yes, he was on a roll) by asking Roger to define his legacy, to which TMF said:

Don't you worry, Roger. You're on the right track. And that's one gap that is definitely getting smaller.