After all he’s been through in his life, Tommy Haas finally found reason to smile at the end of another long journey on a tennis court.

The German, along with Croatia’s Marin Cilic, produced a third-round match of considerable quality at the 2009 Wimbledon Championships. The slugfest evolved into a sprawling and soaring showcase that kept a Court 1 crowd spellbound over the course of two days. When these two Friday foes reached their Saturday endpoint, the sport of tennis claimed the ultimate victory. Fortunately for Haas, an up-for-grabs ticket to the fourth round fell into his hands on this most tension-filled occasion at the All England Club.

Haas, a man who has historically lost close matches at Grand Slam events, finally prevailed in an extended passion play. The 31-year-old knocked used a break of serve in the seventeenth game of the fifth and deciding set to claim the best match of the tournament to date. Once on the edge of victory but then near the abyss of defeat on Friday evening, Haas steadied himself on Saturday to outlast Cilic, 7-5, 7-5, 1-6, 6-7 (3), 10-8, in a remarkable up-and-down donnybrook that required 4 hours and 28 minutes of riveting competition.

When Haas returned to the lawns of Wimbledon one day after warring with Cilic for 4 hours and 1 minute, the veteran knew that the previous evening’s marathon–free of resolution–would turn into a Saturday sprint to the winner’s circle. Tommy Haas and Cilic would play only 27 minutes in abundant light that contrasted with the 9:33 p.m. finish of their Friday foray, but those 27 minutes represented one of the more meaningful stretches of each player’s career.

For many different reasons–all of them laced with a considerable amount of poignancy–the loser of this epic encounter was going to be devastated to a particularly pronounced degree. One of these men was going to sit in front of his locker at the All England Club and realize that a lot of terrific tennis–more than four hours of it, to be more precise–would go for naught. One of these seeded players–Haas 24th, Cilic 11th–was going to be denied a chance at a winnable fourth-round match against Igor Andreev, and a potential date with Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals. One of these stick-wielding wonders would have to confront the fact that after playing so well for so long in a Friday evening marathon, this Saturday sprint would produce another blot on a career path littered with disappointing results.

For Haas, the specter of defeat looomed particularly large. The German once attained the world’s No. 2 ranking, only to have his career derailed in 2002 by two separate events. A car accident on June 8 of that year nearly killed his parents, forcing Haas to retreat from his on-court responsibilities. Later in 2002, Haas then suffered a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder, which required surgery and a full year’s worth of rehabilitation. Missing all of 2003 due to his physical woes, Haas lost the rhythm and regularity an elite player not only covets, but requires. In the past few years, the product of the Nick Bollitieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, has done a commendable job of regrouping, reaching the 2007 Australian Open semifinals and fighting his way to three separate U.S. Open quarterfinals (2004, 2006, 2007). Yet, for all he had achieved under psychologically challenging circumstances, Haas’s balky body would continue to betray him.

At Wimbledon in 2007, Haas tore a stomach muscle in a third-round win, preventing him from taking on Roger Federer in the round of 16. This incident followed a withdrawal from The Championships in 2005, when a sprained ankle suffered during warm-ups took the German out of the tournament before it even started. In the 2006 U.S. Open quarters, Haas took a two-set lead against Nikolay Davydenko, only for cramps to sabotage his game and scuttle his plans in New York. Bad luck and memorable collapses have trailed Haas like a black rain cloud; in addition to all his injury-created losses, the German has also had a penchant for blowing big leads at slams, a trait never more apparent than when he lost a two-set lead to Federer in the fourth round of this year’s French Open. You name it, Tommy Haas has endured it. A loss to Cilic–in which he led by two sets and then had two match points in the fourth set at 5-4, 40-15 on the Croatian’s serve–would have left the 31-year-old reeling.

For Cilic, the stakes in this showdown were also appreciably high, even though the 20-year-old–unlike Haas–has most of his career in front of him. Cilic isn’t being expected to reach the semifinals or finals of Grand Slam tournaments just yet, but with his failure to reach the quarterfinals at a single major championship, the world’s 13th-ranked player is in danger of hitting an alarmingly low ceiling. Cilic had an opportunity to advance to the round of eight at SW19, due to the absence of Juan Martin del Potro from this particular section of the gentlemen’s singles bracket. Doors like that don’t always swing open in professional tennis; Marin Cilic needed to take advantage, and after blowing a set point in the first set and then forfeiting two match points at 6-5 in the fifth, the youngster from the Balkans needed to summon forth a Saturday surge against a man 11 years his senior.

Who, then, would rise to the moment? Haas, the tortured tennis graybeard with a long trail of sob stories in tow, or Cilic, the young pup who needed to send a message to the big dogs in the sport?

In the 27 minutes it took to resolve this titanic tilt, Haas didn’t so much win as Cilic lost the plot.

The two competitors resumed play from Friday’s suspension with the fifth set deadlocked at 6-all. After four uneventful holds brought the scoreline to 8-all, Cilic–serving at 15-all–lost a forehand that gave Haas a 15-30 opening. When the German nailed a down-the-line backhand pass for 15-40, the Croatian felt the weight of the moment crashing down on his frail shoulders.

Haas dominated the ensuing rally to break for a 9-8 lead, and even though the German wobbled when he tried to serve out the match in the next game, Cilic–so resilient in erasing a two-set deficit on Friday–flinched on a pair of break chances. Twice, the Croatian had a very easy forehand put-away on a short ball from Haas, and twice–with the court wide open–Cilic couldn’t keep the ball in play, with the first forehand rocketing long and the second one smacking the middle of the net. Given not just one reprieve, but two, Haas came to his senses. Hitting with more authority from the baseline, the 24th seed didn’t allow Cilic to find the open court, and when the Croatian sent one more forehand long, Haas–used to the short end of the stick in drawn-out duels–finally landed on the sunshine side of a tennis divide.

It’s worth noting, in conclusion, that Haas and Cilic played remarkable tennis late on Friday, trading haymakers and pulling out pressure-packed points when the lighting at Court 1 was as bad as–if not worse than–the lighting that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal had to deal with in their 2008 Wimbledon final. It is well known in the tennis community that if Federer and Nadal had reached 8-all in the final set of their unforgettable battle, the match would have been postponed until the following day. In this match, Cilic was just about to finish off Haas on Friday, but when the German managed to scramble back and tie the fifth set at 6-apiece, a suspension entered the picture. The drama might have been reduced for Saturday’s resumption, but it bears mentioning that if Federer and Nadal had been involved in this kind of a match, tennis journalists throughout the world would have been singing hosannas from the rooftops. Haas-Cilic ‘09 won’t receive the publicity or praise of Federer-Nadal ‘08, but in terms of drama, passion, suspense and grit, this match offered everything that makes tennis so special in a Grand Slam setting.

Call this match the low-key classic, then. No trophies were handed out on Saturday at SW19, but Tommy Haas and Marin Cilic left a memorable imprint on Wimbledon just the same.