No. 1 of '17: From start to finish, Kyrgios and Federer gave it all

With 2017 nearing its close, it's time to decide what was the year's best match. Steve Tignor will conclude his top 10 contest countdown over the next two weeks—but which was your favorite? We want to know, so vote for your favorite match in our poll.

Tennis Channel will air the Top 3 matches with the most votes on December 31st, in full.

Roger Federer d. Nick Kyrgios 7-6 (9), 6-7 (9), 7-6 (5), Miami semifinals

As he walked back to the baseline, Nick Kyrgios stared across the net at his opponent with a look of disbelief on his face. He and Roger Federer were in the process of changing sides at 9-9 in the first-set tiebreaker, but a few seconds earlier, Kyrgios had assumed he would be walking off the court a 10-8 winner. He had, after all, just dropped a 130-plus-m.p.h. bomb serve to Federer’s backhand side. In Kyrgios’s experience, that’s usually more than enough to earn him a point. Not this time. Not against Federer at 8-9 in a tiebreaker.

Federer stuck out his racquet and blocked the ball back. A fair number of other players in that situation could have done the same. But what they couldn’t have done was put the ball in the most difficult spot possible for their opponents. Federer sent his return skidding short, low, and at an extreme crosscourt angle. Instead of winning the set, Kyrgios found himself hustling past the doubles alley just to stay in the point. But he wasn’t in it for long; with the rest of the court wide open, Federer flicked another backhand up the line for a winner. Kyrgios, like so many other tennis fans over the last 15 years, could only stare at Federer and shake his head.

If one point can sum up this year’s three-hour and 10-minute semifinal between Federer and Kyrgios at the Miami Open, it was that one. Over the course of an evening at Crandon Park that was equal parts tense and raucous, the 21-year-old Kyrgios and the 35-year-old Federer put their radically different styles and personalities—and ages—up against each other, and from beginning to end there was almost nothing to separate them.

Kyrgios hammered 135-m.p.h first serves and 125-m.p.h. second serves. He worked Federer from side to side with his heavy topspin forehand. He volleyed well, passed well, and mixed up his pace and positioning intelligently. He rattled Federer a few times with his own version of the Sabr. And he made his second reverse-tweener crosscourt passing-shot winner of the tournament. Even after losing that first-set tiebreaker, 11-9, Kyrgios never went away or let his emotions get the best of him—not a for a single point.

Kyrgios also hit a forehand that clocked in at 118 miles per hour. The only problem was, Federer was there to volley it for a winner. That was Kyrgios’s only problem all night, really. The guy on the other side of the net wouldn’t go away, either—not for a single point.

Federer answered Kyrgios’s attack with his own more varied but equally potent one. He read and covered Kyrgios’s serve; the Aussie hit just 14 aces, a fairly low number for him. As always, Federer’s serve and forehand were there when he needed them, and his tactic of hitting a soft backhand to Kyrgios’s backhand, in order to elicit a soft ball in return, allowed him to run around and crack forehands on several key points. One day after beating Tomas Berdych in another third-set tiebreaker, Federer didn’t lack any fire or energy. He matched Kyrgios not only shot for shot, but “Come on!” for “Come on!”

“I was expecting him to do trick shots and all that stuff,” said Federer, who obviously had a thing or two to prove on this night. “For me it was really important to do the same: try actually to also play the game that way and make him feel, well, that’s how I actually also play the game.”

Yet it wasn’t the firepower and shot-making wizardry that elevated this match above all others in 2017. It was how, just when you thought one of these guys might crack, they didn’t.

HIGHLIGHTS:

When Kyrgios served for the first set at 5-4, a seemingly demoralized Federer sprang to life and broke him. When Kyrgios led 9-8 in the tiebreaker, Federer answered again with that brilliant backhand return.

In the second set, it was Kyrgios’s turn to stay strong under pressure. He leveled the second-set tiebreaker at 5-5 with his fiercest forehand winner of the night. He saved a match point with a surprise kick serve change of pace, saved another with a service winner, and closed the set with an ace.

Finally, in the deciding tiebreaker, it was Federer’s turn, down 4-5, to win the last three points for the match. And in the end, it was Kyrgios who cracked. He had lived by his full-throttle second serve all night, and he died by it. At 5-5, he hit a 128-m.p.h. second ball over the service line to hand Federer match point.

The Miami crowd roared its approval, as they did all evening for Kyrgios’s missteps. It had been three years since Federer had played there, and six years since he had reached a semifinal, so the fans had a lot of pent-up Fed love to show. But in the process they were overly hard on Kyrgios. He helped put on a tremendous show for them, and his play and grit and fire deserved respect.

At the same time, like any passionate partisan crowd in any sport, the Miamians knew what they wanted, and what they wanted was a Federer win. The fans at Crandon Park that night may have been overzealous in their rooting at times, but passion is the last thing we should discourage in a tennis audience. As brilliant as this match was, it wouldn’t have been as memorable without its audience.

Passion is also the last thing we should discourage in Nick Kyrgios. Like this crowd, he went overboard at times, cursing, smashing multiple racquets, telling people in the crowd to “shut up,” and raising his voice at the ball kids (the latter is generally the only thing about Kyrgios that rubs me the wrong way). But if those were sins, they were sins of effort, and much more forgivable than the sins of non-effort he has been known to commit in the past. Kyrgios lost this match, while simultaneously proving once and for all that he has it in him to win major titles in the future.

“It was worthwhile to stay more,” Federer said, when he was asked about squandering two match points in the second set. “The atmosphere got even more epic.”

“When you’re winning, you’re always right, and everything is even more golden and beautiful.”

It was that kind of year for Federer, and it was that kind of night for tennis—the best night of 2017. Even the man who could have won the match an hour earlier was happy to stick around for another set, just to soak it all in.