Roger Federer’s chances of winning an 18th Grand Slam title are still alive after he came back from two sets down to defeat Gael Monfils in a thrilling quarter-final showdown at the US Open.
The Swiss maestro, who can reclaim the world number two ranking from Rafael Nadal if he triumphs at Flushing Meadows, fell into deep trouble when he dropped the first two sets against the flamboyant Frenchman.
Monfils was trying to match his best Grand Slam performance of six years ago, when he made the semifinals of the French Open, only to lose to Federer in four set. While he hasn’t been able to get that far since, he came very close when he held two match points on the Federer serve in the 10th game of the fourth set.
Unfortunately, the Frenchman couldn’t convert either opportunity and Federer demonstrated his fighting ability to save both, hold for five-all, break a game later, and then win the set 7-5 to send the match to a fifth and deciding set.
Monfils will be left to rue two consecutive double-faults which saw him broken in the 11th game of that set. It would eventually come back to bite him as the final set saw the 17-time Grand Slam champion run away with it, 6-2.
It marks the first time since Wimbledon two years ago in which Federer came back from two sets down to win, his victim at the time being another Frenchman in Julien Benneteau.
Next for Federer will be Croatia’s Marin Cilic, who matched his best performance at a Grand Slam when he sent Tomas Berdych packing with a clinical straight-sets victory in the earlier quarter-final.
Cilic sent down 19 aces against the sixth-seeded Czech to become the first Croatian man since his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, to reach the last four at Flushing Meadows since 1996.
Cilic, who missed last year’s US Open as he served a doping ban, will now aim to become the first Croat of any gender to reach a Grand Slam final since Ivanisevic won Wimbledon in 2001.
But to do that, he will have to overcome a 0-5 record against Federer, which includes their most recent meeting in Toronto last month which saw the Swiss maestro win in three sets.
The other semifinal will pit Serbia’s world number one Novak Djokovic up against Japan’s Kei Nishikori, with both ties to take place on Sunday morning (AEST).
Both the women’s semifinals will be played overnight, with world number one Serena Williams taking on Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova and former top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki facing China’s Peng Shuai.
If both semi-finals go to script, then what a dream women’s final it will be between Williams and Wozniacki, who haven’t met at a Grand Slam tournament since the 2011 US Open, which saw the American topple the then-world number one Wozniacki in straight sets in the semi-finals.
It was that loss which exposed Wozniacki as a pretender at Grand Slam tournaments, and she remains the most recent woman to hold the world number one ranking without winning a Grand Slam title.
So, both of the men’s and women’s semifinals have been decided. Can Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer set up another tantalising Grand Slam final showdown, or will one of Kei Nishikori or Marin Cilic destroy the script?
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