Who would argue that Arthur Ashe Stadium does not belong to Federer in the aftermath of his fifth consecutive United States Open championship? In a men’s final that made up in historical appeal what it lacked in drama, Federer disposed of Andy Murray, 6-2, 7-5, 6-2, on Monday night to become the first player to win five titles in a row at the Open and Wimbledon.
Federer is the first man in the open era to win the United States Open five consecutive years; Bill Tilden won the United States championships six straight times in the 1920s.
It was Federer’s 13th major championship, bringing him to within one of another immortal, Pete Sampras. “One thing’s for sure,” he said in an on-court interview. “I’m not going to stop at 13. That would be terrible.”
Terribly unlucky, that is, which sums up the first eight months of Federer’s 2008 season. At the Australian Open he lost in the semifinals while battling an illness that turned out to be mononucleosis. He lost in the finals of the French Open and Wimbledon to a surging Rafael Nadal, who ended Federer’s four-and-a-half-year stay at No. 1 last month.
For any other player, Federer’s run in the Grand Slams would be called resplendent. But because Federer had held the tennis world up like a 21st century Atlas, people openly wondered what was wrong with him.
On Monday came his answer: Absolutely nothing. Murray, a 21-year-old Briton, came into the match No. 4 in the world and did not play badly. But he was no match for Federer, who produced 36 winners to Murray’s 16.
“I felt great,” Federer said. “I felt like I was invincible for a while again.”
In an on-court interview, Murray, a Scot who is the same age Federer was when he won his first major, at Wimbledon in 2003, said: “Came up against, in my opinion, the best player ever to play. He definitely set the record straight today.”
While Nadal emerged this year as Federer’s toughest opponent on any surface, mononucleosis provided his stiffest challenge. The virus that causes the illness can tear through the body like a storm, with vestiges affecting the body for months. In 2007, Mario Ancic, a Croat who had cracked the top 10 at the end of 2006, contracted the illness, sat out six months to recover and saw his world ranking plummet to No. 85.
Federer, 27, dropped only one spot, from No. 1 to No. 2, but his fall set off seismic shock waves in tennis because of his seeming invincibility the previous four years.
He left tennis for six weeks after losing to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open, a tournament he played believing his general malaise was due to food poisoning. It was not until March that Federer found out his lingering fatigue was a function of much more than bad food, frequent travel or physical exertion.
Federer was still feeling the effects of the illness this summer. Traveling 12 time zones to New York after winning the gold medal in doubles for Switzerland in Beijing, Federer experienced the Olympic hangover that dominated the conversation during the first week of the Open.
Fatigue was cause for concern. “I was so tired after Beijing coming here, and then of course I’m a bit worried,” Federer said. He added, “Maybe I put it down as sickness when I still feel a little bit slow sometimes.”
There was no rest for the weary. Federer’s draw provided inviting targets for him to shoot for and ammunition in the form of revenge. One by one, he picked off players who had beaten him earlier in the year.
In the third round, he prevailed in four sets against Radek Stepanek, who had upset him in Rome; in the semifinals, he knocked off Djokovic in four sets.
Murray’s upset of Nadal in a semifinal, which was contested over two days because of Tropical Storm Hanna’s intrusion, afforded Federer one more chance to avenge an earlier loss.
Returning to the A.T.P. circuit in Dubai in March after his doctor-mandated layoff, Federer lost to Murray in the first round, 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-4. Afterward, Federer dismissed Murray’s game. He said it had not changed much since they first squared off in 2005, and that Murray was “going to have to grind very hard for the next few years” if he persisted in hanging back and waiting for his opponent to make a mistake rather than attack.
Federer was criticized at the time for a rare affront against an opponent. And yet on Monday, Federer’s earlier assessment of Murray’s game read like a match summation. Murray came to the net 11 times while Federer had 44 net approaches. Murray’s feet were rooted several feet behind the baseline for much of the 1-hour 51-minute contest.
Federer had something to do with that, pinning Murray back there with his deep serves. In the first set Federer converted 76 percent of his first serves and closed out the set in a tidy 27 minutes.
Early in the second, Murray went on a run, winning 11 of 12 points to earn a triple break point for a 3-2 lead. Federer saved the first of the break points and on the second, the rally ended with Murray hitting a backhand out. Replays showed that one of Federer’s shots during the exchange should have been called out.
“That was the key,” Federer said. “After that, I began to play freely.”
Federer iced the second set when he broke Murray at love with four winners, including a running forehand passing shot on set point.
After Murray dumped a forehand into the net on the second championship point in the third set, Federer rolled around on the court like a pill bug. When he met Murray at the net, he congratulated him on a great tournament.
“And I said that, you know, I agreed with everyone that he’s had a terrible year,” Murray said.
He laughed. The joke was on everybody who had written Federer off.
