Roger Federer suffered a stunning Wimbledon exit as the defending champion blew a two-set lead and wasted a match point in a 2-6, 6-7 (5\/7), 7-5, 6-4, 13-11 quarter-final defeat against South Africa\u2019s Kevin Anderson on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Federer\u2019s bid to win a ninth Wimbledon title came to an astonishing end as the Swiss star collapsed in a nail-biting four hour and 13 minute classic that ranks as one of the tournament\u2019s greatest upsets.<\/p>\n
It was Federer\u2019s earliest departure from Wimbledon since his shock second round defeat against Sergiy Stakhovsky in 2013.<\/p>\n
Eighth seed Anderson will play 2016 runner-up Milos Raonic or American ninth seed John Isner on Friday for a place in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
\u201cDown two sets to love I tried my best to keep fighting. Beating Roger Federer here at Wimbledon will be one I remember, especially in such a close match,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept telling myself to keep believing. I said today is going to be my day. You need that mindset against Roger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ecstatic. That\u2019s what you work so hard for. Matches likes that are very special.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the only the second time at Wimbledon, Federer was beaten after holding a two-set lead, with his previous loss from that position coming against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the 2011 quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
The 20-time Grand Slam champion appeared to be moving towards his fifth successive Wimbledon semi-final after taking the opening two sets.<\/p>\n
That initial burst gave Federer 34 successive sets won at Wimbledon, equalling his own record set between 2005 and 2006.<\/p>\n
But, playing on Court One for the first time in three years, Federer was unusually error-prone and became visibly frustrated as eighth seed Anderson refused to surrender.<\/p>\n
Anderson had failed to take a single set off Federer in their previous four meetings.<\/p>\n
Yet once he had ended Federer\u2019s run of holding serve for 85 consecutive games — a streak dating back to last year\u2019s semi-final — Anderson\u2019s confidence soared.<\/p>\n
Deploying his huge serve to lethal effect, Anderson roared back to leave the champion\u2019s title bid in tatters thanks to a barrage of 28 aces and 65 winners.<\/p>\n
Anderson is the first South African man to make the last four at Wimbledon since Kevin Curren in 1983.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old made his maiden Grand Slam final appearance as last year\u2019s US Open, losing to Rafael Nadal.<\/p>\n
But his run at Wimbledon might have come as a surprise even to Anderson, who had never made it past the fourth round prior to this year and lost in the first round of the grass-court event at Queen\u2019s Club last month.<\/p>\n
Not since Wayne Ferreira in 1994 had a South African man made the Wimbledon quarter-finals, but Anderson wasn\u2019t overawed by the occasion.<\/p>\n
Federer didn\u2019t seemed bothered by being away from Centre Court when he cruised through the first set in just 26 minutes.<\/p>\n
But he lost his rhythm at the start of the second set as Anderson made his move.<\/p>\n
Federer responded, quickly breaking back before taking the set in a tie-break.<\/p>\n
He saved a match point at 4-5 when Federer missed a forehand, then broke to serve for the third set.<\/p>\n
Federer was completely out of sorts by now and his uncharacteristic struggles on his forehand didn\u2019t improve in the fourth set.<\/p>\n
Anderson scented blood and, out-duelling Federer time and again, he broke in the seventh game to level the match at two sets all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger Federer suffered a stunning Wimbledon exit as the defending champion blew a two-set lead and wasted a match point in a 2-6, 6-7 (5\/7), 7-5, 6-4, 13-11 quarter-final defeat against South Africa\u2019s Kevin Anderson on Wednesday. Federer\u2019s bid to win a ninth Wimbledon title came to an astonishing end as the Swiss star collapsed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36925,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36923\/revisions\/36925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}