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Chris here. As many of you know, Roger Federer came back from the brink to beat Andy Roddick 4-6, 7-6 (8), 6-4 yesterday in Shanghai. With the win, Federer improved to a whopping 12-1 lifetime against Roddick in ATP matches.
True, Roddick probably lost the match more than Roger won it (Roddick had three match points in the second set!). But it's a testament to how versatile Federer really is: If he can't beat you down, he'll find some other way to win, perhaps by frustrating the hell out of you.
In that spirit, here's a video of a point that many of you may have seen; I believe it's from Basel in 2002. It may be only in the last two years that the public has started noticing Federer—but his colleagues have been confounded by him for years.
It's worth watching a couple of times.
Notice how Roddick assumes the point is over, for a split-second; how he suddenly recognizes that Federer is actually chasing the ball down (!); how Federer (in the slo-mo replay) is flying one way diagonally off the court while his upper body and arms and wrist are rotating and twisting into the contorted overhead; and how Roddick knows the moment the ball is struck that, once again, he's been had by Roger.
I don't speak Italian, but I think I the commentator says something about "incredible" and "impossible" . . .
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