If Roger Federer continues to play with fire, his hopes of Grand Slam glory will go by the wayside.

Then again, after yet another remarkable escape at a major tournament, perhaps the iconic Swiss champion won’t have to dance so intimately with the grim reaper of tennis as the 2009 French Open continues.

In a fourth-round match that caused flashbacks to flood the mind’s eye, Federer overcame a two-set deficit and rallied for a 6-7 (4), 5-7, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 victory over Germany’s Tommy Haas. The five-set Houdini act, which sped by in just 3 hours and 7 minutes on Court Philippe Chatrier, sends Federer into Wednesday’s quarterfinals against Andy Roddick and Gael Monfils, who–at press time–have yet to begin their round of 16 clash.

The drama of this match, as is usually the case in tennis, resided in the psyches of the players as they felt their way through numerous emotional landmines. Naturally, the man who felt particularly burdened heading into this fourth-round throwdown was Federer. Due to Rafael Nadal’s stunning loss to Robin Soderling the day before, Federer couldn’t avoid the buzz that had continued to consume the global tennis community, gathered in Paris for this sprawling 15-day event. All anyone could talk about after the King of Clay’s unthinkably premature exit was the notion that Federer could finally win the French, complete a career Grand Slam, and find an even loftier place in the tennis pantheon. Since the ascendancy of Nadal began in 2005, Federer has never had a French Open draw with Rafa removed from the equation. Once that unlikely scenario finally unfolded on Sunday afternoon, the Swiss superstar immediately understood that all the pressure–and all the expectations–would rest firmly on his own two shoulders.

Casual fans, and even many other writers across the globe, immediately got caught up in the hype and anticipation. Even though Nadal and Federer stood on opposite halves of the men’s singles draw, and even though Federer therefore had to win three matches just to reach Sunday’s men’s final, the pundits and talking heads began to talk about Federer’s grand moment of opportunity, and the last best chance he’ll ever have to win the one major tournament that’s eluded him over the years.

Such talk, freighted with an overwhelming aura of expectancy, is too much for any one man to handle. Federer didn’t ask for anyone to hand him the French Open title before he went out and earned it, but when Nadal lost, a great many tennis observers simply couldn’t help themselves. Without having done anything on his own, Federer–given a Trojan Horse gift by Robin Soderling–stepped into a mental death trap he’d never faced before: “Win now, and you’re the greatest… but if you don’t win, oh, you really blew it.”

That’s the mental mountain Federer had to climb, in the reshaped world created by Rafa Nadal’s mind-blowing loss.

In the first two and a half sets of this match against Haas–the former world No. 2 whose career has been derailed by repeated injuries–Federer handled the moment the way any normal person would: He caved to the pressure, albeit with help from his opponent.

Federer lost only one point in his first six service games, but with Haas throwing down big serves in his own right, the German got to and won a first-set tiebreak. Federer is usually the player who steals sets when he’s getting outplayed, but Haas turned the tables early on, and that made the Swiss press, with disastrous results. Federer broke for a 3-1 lead in the second set, but–as has been the case in his slight but noticeable decline in past months–could not maintain an advantage. Haas broke back, and broke yet again, to close down the second set and leave the Chatrier crowd in a state of stunned silence. Federer cruised on most of his service points through the first two sets, but the 13-time major champion made the regrettable mistake of bundling large clusters of errors into two service games. Haas might have been fairly impotent as a returner of serve, but the German–who once resided near the very top of his sport in the early part of this decade–proved to be the far more opportunistic big-point player. With Chatrier once again playing like a hardcourt and not a clay surface–as was the case in Soderling’s massive upset of Nadal–Haas’s booming serve prevented Federer from finding his rhythm. When Federer–feeling the heat of the moment–couldn’t maintain his second-set lead, the outlook became genuinely gloomy for the man who had been given a virtually impossible set of expectations.


Then, however, the flashbacks began… flashbacks that carried Federer and tennis fans to Melbourne, Australia, four not-so-long months ago.

In the previous major championship, the 2009 Australian Open, Federer also fell into a two-set ditch against big-bashing Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic. Outhit and outflanked for two and a half sets, Federer was hanging by a thread in the middle of set three, and looking for something–anything–that could serve as a crucial turning point. When Berdych muffed an overhead and then biffed an easy volley in the seventh game of the third set, Federer broke and gained a spring in his step. Before very long, the Swiss had wrapped up a five-set victory with increasingly fluid and convincing form in all aspects of his game.

Now in Paris against a hot-hitting Haas, Federer needed that same kind of turning point in a third set, his French Open flame about to be snuffed out. Sure enough, this proud champion found a will and a way on a day when death seemed ready to even up some scores.

The turning point in this match came when Federer–serving at 3-4 and 30-40 in the third–faced what amounted to a mini-match point. A loss of serve then, and Haas would be able to serve for the match at 5-3. The Swiss–unable to avoid the burden placed on him by the Nadal defeat and the tidal wave of chatter that came crashing down upon him–stood on the cliff, his margin for error exhausted. He could not miss. Not on this break point that held so much peril, but with it, a pinch of promise.


Rising to the moment, Federer delivered when perched near his tennis abyss. The No. 2 seed drilled an inside-outside forehand that barely stayed in the court to get to deuce. That one shot perked up his body language, and when the Swiss held for 4-all, the tone of the tilt changed. Haas, up 40-15, made four straight errors to give Federer a break and a 5-4 advantage. When the three-time runner-up at Roland Garros served out the third set in the following game, the Chatrier crowd roared its approval. One pivotal sequence in an Australian Open fourth-round match had met its kissing cousin four months later in France.

The rest of the match featured Federer in solid form. The Swiss breezed through the fourth set in just 21 minutes, and after digging out of love-30 at 0-1 in the fifth, a newly-confident second seed broke Haas for a 3-2 lead. Once in front, Federer put his foot on the accelerator, breaking again for a 5-2 advantage and cruising to the finish line.

We’ve seen this movie before from Roger Federer. We’ve seen it quite recently, in fact. But if this superlative Swiss athlete finds himself in another two-set hole in the quarterfinals, chances are Lady Luck might be too tired to spend another exhausting day at his side.

Fed, after all, is married. For the sake of his pregnant wife’s health, the 27-year-old husband and father-to-be might want to eliminate drama from his next match at Roland Garros.

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