You cannot blame Juan Martin Del Potro for looking shell-shocked after taking a beating at the gifted hands of Roger Federer. Playing the Swiss on the sort of form he showed in dispatching Del Potro 6-3 6-0 6-0 en route to the semifinals must be like being beaten up by an assailant in velvet gloves, whose every punch comes in the form of a caress - but is none the less brutal for it.
“You have to ask Roger what happened. I can't do nothing in the match. He play like No. 1 of the world, so that's it,” said the Argentine, looking, understandably, a little bit punch-drunk in the post-match press conference. “I just have a bad day. He's Roger Federer. If you don't be good, you lose.” Few truer words have been spoken so far at this Australian Open, for Federer found top gear against Del Potro - and when that happens, it seldom ends well for his opponent. Federer’s performance was a marked return to form for the tournament’s second seed – and how strange that still sounds, so accustomed are we to his supremacy – and it quickly expunged the memory of his fourth-round five-set wobble against Tomas Berdych on Sunday.
This was Federer at his elegant best; from the whipped passing shots to the noiseless dancing along the baseline. Del Potro made a fist of it for the first few games, but thereafter he might just as well have been sat in one of the luxurious superboxes at Rod Laver Arena, sipping Heineken and enjoying the spectacle of one of the greatest players the world has ever seen going through his repertoire of bewildering brilliance. Even Federer professed himself surprised at ease with which he strolled into the semifinals. “Things went much better than I expected. I mean, things were great for me. I was really happy the way I came out and played. I kind of felt good from the start. The longer the match went, the more he struggled and the better I got,” he said. “The difference was big in the end. So it was so surprising to have that kind of a score in the quarters of a Slam, especially having so many great players around at this stage of the competition.”
Federer faces a familiar foe in Andy Roddick next. The last time they met here in Australia, in the 2007 semifinals, Federer inflicted a merciless beating on the American, but after watching his rival knock an overheated Novak Djokovic out of the tournament, Federer is expecting a more testing time when they meet again. He was asked if he thought that his performance against Del Potro meant that he has recaptured the scintillating form he showed at Melbourne Park two years ago. He could not quite recall how that felt, but acknowledged that it was possible. “It's just so hard to remember how you played. It just all happens naturally. You go out there and you run and you hope you're going to hit it in the corner, basically,” he said, making excellence sound like the easiest thing in the world to attain. “There's no real secret. It’s just hard practice and a lot of talent and being mentally there when it really counts. I was able to play awesome tennis against Andy when I beat him in the semis here. Like tonight, I was so surprised how easy it went and how just everything fell into place at the right time for me. Of course, I'm not going to expect a result like what I did today or what happened two years ago against him. I expect to be in a real battle.”
He will be ready for whatever comes, for that is the state of readiness required at this stage of the tournament. But after finding a gear against Del Potro that other players can only dream about, Federer must now be able to feel the touch of a 14th Grand Slam title on his fingertips.
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