There were two noticeable momentum shifts in Ernests Gulbis’ favor during his 6-7(5), 7-6(3), 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 upset of Roger Federer in the fourth round of the French Open on Sunday afternoon. Who knows if they affected the eventual outcome of the match, but they certainly did not hurt Gulbis on his way to the second Grand Slam quarterfinal of his career.
Trailing by a set and deadlocked at 5-5 in the second, Gulbis squandered a break point by dumping a backhand in the net. A break of a different sort quickly followed, with the Latvian opting for his foot as a rare weapon of choice.
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“I have to respect every court, you know,” Gulbis joked in his post-match press conference. “I have to break at least one racket on every court of the world. Otherwise, I would show too much disrespect to Paris center court and I cannot allow this to myself. I just had to do it.”
After that incident–a relatively modest one by Gulbis’ standards–he righted the ship to hold for 6-6, win the ensuing tiebreaker, and dominate the third set 6-2. Including the ‘breaker, the world No. 17 won nine of the next 11 games after decimating his stick–from 5-6 in the second to 1-0 in the fourth.
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Trailing 5-2 in the fourth after Federer had seized an upper hand, Gulbis took a medical timeout for what looked like a lower-back issue. The underdog left the court for seven minutes to receive treatment, then came back out and promptly won two straight games. Federer managed to hold on his second time of asking at 5-4, but the 32-year-old Swiss never completely got back on track. Following the medical timeout, Gulbis won eight of the match’s final 12 games.
“I’m honest,” the 18th seed assured. “I’m not big on medical timeouts. I don’t like to take it, but I take it when it’s really necessary. It probably was my third medical timeout in life. I didn’t want to take it in the fifth set, so I took it in the end of the fourth set. Unfortunately, it was before his serve. I don’t like to do it, but I just had to do it. Otherwise I was scared a little bit to pull a muscle, and I had already a tear in the muscle in that area. So I just was being cautious.
“I know the feeling. You know, it’s not nice to sit there for three minutes and to wait for somebody, but it’s part of it. What can I do?”
“I went through the same thing against (Dmitry) Tursunov,” Federer commented. “So if the rules allow you to do that, you know, what can you do? There is nothing much. It’s definitely something that hasn’t happened very often against me. Back‑to‑back matches, they leave the court, go for treatment, and then come back. You don’t know what they were doing. Must be lower back or thigh or groin or something like that, because the rest they have to do on the court. So, I mean, that’s part of the game, you know. In the past I guess it’s been abused much more than today. But still, what can you tell? He didn’t look hurt in any way. But if you can use it, you know, might as well do it.
“Clearly you don’t want anybody to abuse it, you know. I hope that Ernests didn’t, or whatever, whoever did it doesn’t do it for that.”
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