Roger Federer Loses To Unseeded John Millman In One Of The Biggest Upsets In US Open Tennis History
I cannot believe that just happened. I don’t know if it was the heat, the humidity, his back, or something else, but about halfway through the match something was clearly off with Roger Federer. I’m sure a lot of you won’t get the significance of any of these numbers I’m going to say, but this was one of the worst matches Fed has ever played. Federer came into this match a -2500 gambling favorite. I can’t even try to put that in perspective for you of how big an underdog Millman was in this match and he made Roger look like he was 50.
For the first two sets Fed’s first serve was under 40%. That’s a jarring number. For his career that number sits at 62%. Fed had ten double faults, which marked just the fourth time ever he had double digits in a grand slam match. Despite his terrible serving numbers, Fed was up a break serving for the second set at 5-4 40-15. He was broken and never recovered from that point. At the US Open Roger had never lost to a player outside the top 50 ranked on the tour until tonight.
Australia’s John Millman, ranked 55th in the world, played the match of his life, never cracking under the pressure of a career defining moment. John had never made it to the second week of a grand slam until now. He’d never beaten someone inside the top 10 rankings. Nevertheless, here he was going toe to toe with Federer and outplaying him. You just kept expecting Roger to snap out of it and start dominating, but it didn’t happen. In the fourth set he broke Millman to go up 4-2 and had game point to go up 5-2, but missed an easy over head slam to erase that chance. He would get broken back and then routed in the tie break to lose the match. Sickening. He committed 76 unforced errors. That is INSANE for Roger.
It’s one of the biggest upsets in US Open tennis history. Now that probably doesn’t mean a lot to many of you because it’s tennis, but as a Fed super fan this is awful. I have the same feeling Riggs and Trent had with Tiger when he wasn’t coming close to winning slams last year. This could be it for Fed. For the first time in years he looked old and defeated. He resorted to drop shots, and tons of them, to try and get Millman off his game. I’ve never seen Fed try and do that, but it was all he had left. His serve was nothing, he was missing winners he usually hits in his sleep. He couldn’t do anything. SEVENTY SIX ERRORS. What. The. Fuck.
If you’re a Patriots fan, just imagine the first time Brady actually starts shows signs of rapid decline of age. Maybe you’re a LeBron guy and just imagine the first time he can’t do anything he’s been doing over the last 15 years. Watching your favorite athlete decline, like what Federer just showed, is fucking brutal. I really hope it’s not something physical and it was just the heat that got to him, but it was tough to watch whatever it was. Fed said afterwards that it was just so hot and humid and he kept on sweating more and more as the match went on that it became hard to breath. If that’s all it is then fine we’ll move on. We are robbed of a Federer-Djokovic quarterfinal match that seemed like a lock to happen on Wednesday night. Ugh.
Right after the match Millman was just wondering who he was going to pick in his fantasy football draft in the morning. This guy doesn’t even realize what he just did. Props to him, he seems like a good dude and this is certainly a life changing moment for him. Would love to see the fantasy football chat from his buddies when he joins in the morning. Dude just beat Roger Federer at the US Open….
P.S. Fed should have never left Nike