Roger needs a win Wednesday to continue his streak of making the semis in every major since the French in 2004. I have heard the streak likened to Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak. Federer had to be prepared to play for five straight years and avoid injury, illness and an opponent who “plays in the zone” by being hot and confident for that match.

To put it into prospective, Ivan Lendl has the next longest streak in this category, and it is ten grand slam semis in a row. Another way to look at it is that Nadal, Murray, and Djokovic, numbers 1, 3 and 4 in the world, all have streaks of zero. Not one of them made the semis of this year’s French. Nadal, the world number 1, had a streak of five in a row broken in Paris, since he only made the quarters of the 2007 US Open.