Ramos-Viñolas, a qualifier ranked 70th in the world, hit his forehands crosscourt and his backhands down the line when he was on the attack, when he was in a neutral rally, and even when he was scrambling on defense. In general, he only broke that pattern and went to Federer’s forehand side when he had time to take a point-ending rip at the ball. The strategy kept Federer at bay in the first and third sets, and paid off in the match's crucial game.
With Federer serving at 3-4 in the third, Ramos-Viñolas surprised him by hauling off and hitting an inside-out winner for 15-30. Two points later, at 30-40, he surprised Federer again by going down the line with another forehand, for another winner. It was Ramos-Viñolas’ only service break of the day, but it was the only one he needed.
Afterward, Ramos-Viñolas, who had never beaten a Top 10 player in 15 tries, was suitably flabbergasted. Sometimes, after an upset, we might say that the player who pulled it was the “only person in the building who believed he could win.” Even that wasn’t the case with Ramos-Viñolas, who happily confessed his lack of self-belief.
"It’s difficult to explain how I feel right now. I didn’t expect this victory," Ramos-Viñolas said. In his only other match against Federer, in the first round at Wimbledon in 2012, he had lost 6-1, 6-1, 6-1.
"After the second set I thought I would lose," he admitted today.
Even the post-match statistics said Ramos-Viñolas should have lost. Federer won more points, hit nine more aces and 23 more winners, won a higher percentage of points on both his first and second serves, earned four more break chances, and was a very respectable 25 of 32 at net. Normally, Federer’s unforced errors would tell the tale in a loss like this, but that wasn’t the case, either. He committed just four more than Ramos-Viñolas.
If there was one stretch of play that proved decisive and doomed Federer, it came during the first-set tiebreaker. From 2-2 to 2-5, he made three mistakes from his backhand side. After Federer won two points to make it 4-5, and gave his Shanghai faithful their first reason to roar, Ramos-Viñolas snuffed the rally out with a hook serve to the—guess where?—backhand side. Federer couldn't handle it.