I kept my head down and kept wanting to make him earn it. In the third and fourth set, I felt I was a bit living on the edge with my serve. But then in the fifth, I settled down a little bit on my service games and put enough pressure on him to get that break.

In the middle to late part of the third set, the sciatic nerve in my back started to get inflamed and it sent pain down my right leg and it got worse by the minute,

He's the best I've ever played against, ... There's nowhere to go [against Federer]; there's nothing to do except hit fairways, hit greens and make putts. Every shot has that sort of urgency on it. And if you do what you're supposed to do, you feel like it gives you a chance to win the point. That's just too good.

He was serving well, playing really smart, taking chances on my second serve. If there's anything to fault him on it's not closing me out in the second, it's going away in the third.

Tennis is the loneliest sport

Freed from the thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, start feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic.