Olympiad XXX Tennis: Men's Semifinal Review

The men's semifinals of the 2012 London Olympics were played today and unlike the relatively drama free results of the women's semifinals, the men's semifinals were dramatic.

The first semifinal was the showdown between World #1 Roger Federer and 2009 US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro who has an atrocious record of 2 wins and 14 losses against the 17-time major champion.

Yesterday I predicted that Federer would somehow find a way to win this match in order to reach Sunday's Gold medal match, but I was completely unaware how deep Federer would have to dig in order to leave with the win. The match began with Federer not playing well, eventually losing his serve in the first set and del Potro holding his to pull ahead 6-3. In the second set there were no breaks of serve and Federer was able to hold on to a mini-break to even the score at 1-set all after winning the tiebreak by the smallest of margins 7-6(5).

The third and deciding set turned into a test of wills. Because there is no tiebreaker in the deciding set at Wimbledon, the player who would advance to the gold medal round would have to break his opponent's serve. Federer was 0/4 on breakpoints for the first two sets. He ended the match with a very desultory 2 out of 13 on break points. In addition, Federer was serving second, so if he lost his serve he would instantly lose the match; breakpoint would also be matchpoint. As it turned out, Federer was able to break Del Potro in the 19th game and go ahead 10-9 but when he tried to serve out the match he lost his own serve at love and the match was even again at 10-all. There were basically a bunch of love holds of serve until the 31st game where Federer had a breakpoint again which del Potro saved. Finally in the 35th game Federer was able to break again, and this time when he served in the 36th game he was able to get to 30-all and deuce and although de Potro saved a match point but he lost the 2nd one and his chance at the gold medal. The match was 4 hours and 26 minutes long, breaking the record for the longest 3-set match in history set by the clay court semifinal at the 2009 Madrid Masters between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic (and that was three tiebreaks sets).

The second semifinal was between Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic. Almost everyone except those with British citizenship expected Djokovic to win this match (yours truly included). Murray has never before won a career-important match against a member of The Big Three (Federer, Nadal or Djokovic). He's lost three major finals to Federer (2008 US Open, 2010 Australian Open and 2012 Wimbledon) and one to Djokovic (2011 Australian Open). He's lost 5 major semifinals to Nadal and 1 to Djokovic. The Olympics has all the prestige of a major but it does not have the 5-set format. This is a key point, because in 3-set matches Murray has a much closer career head-to-head with both Djokovic and with Federer. The margins in 3-set matches are very much smaller, so that it is easier for Murray to quickly escape with the win despite not necessarily being the better player on the court. He showed this today by beating Djokovic 7-5 7-5. This bodes very well for his campaign to shuck the label of "Best Player On Tour" without a grand slam title. It looks like even though he lost the biggest match of his career less than four weeks ago, he has taken confidence from how well he played to advance his caree by actually defeating a higher ranked player in a very important match. The question is can he do it again two days later with the Greatest Of All Time on the other side of the court.