history rewritten. history made. records tumble in his wake.

for 4 hrs yesterday night, i watched roger federer duel with andy roddick for a place in history, as THE greatest player of all time. and what a match it was. federer with his magic wand of a racket, roddick with a sledgehammer of a racket. this was roddick surpassing his very best and federer digging deep to squeeze out the result.

for the 1st 2 sets, roddick was simply rock solid on his serve. consistently 80% 1st serves in, with accuracy and power. whenever federer caught a glimpse of breaking his serve, he would slam down aces or unreturnable serves. indeed in the 2nd set tiebreak, it was all going horribly wrong for federer, lost the 1st set 7-5, 2-6 down in the 2nd set tiebreak. but federer did a swiss houdini with a combination of luck and finesse to rattle off 6 consecutive pts to take the 2nd set. i clearly rmb going wild and fist pumping like mad when roddick sent his open court volley wide to give federer 6-6 in the tiebreak.

then its was federer who served up a beauty in the 3rd set tiebreak to give himself a 2 sets to 1 lead. the 4th set roddick did well to break federer and served it out oh so consistently to set the stage for the mentally draining, insanely tense finale of a 5th set. there was nothing to separate the 2 sides in the 5th set, for the entire match for tt matter. both serving insanely well, altho federer was broken twice along the way, with roddick nt being broken at all. but as the set went on and on, roddick gradually faltered, seeing more & more duece games on his serve than federer on his, before finally, 2 errors on duece gave federer the win both sides deserved for their performance. it was indeed roddick as ive nv seen him b4, matching federer groundstroke for groundstroke whenever necessary, putting away winners and forcing errors. roddick of the past was so 1-dimensional, with only a powerful serve as his only weapon. but not yesterday, where he played with such finesse, a trait associated more with federer than roddick.

i feel for roddick, but federer still remains as my favourite tennis player. =)