Two years ago, when Roger Federer lost to Tomas Berdych, he admitted that he was looking forward to a long break where he could rest his back and leg.  As Roger heads closer to 31, he’s had to manage back issues.  This is something that has affected many players, including Andy Murray’s coach, Ivan Lendl.

With Federer’s 5-set encounter over Julien Benneteau, most pundits felt he would have an easier time with Xavier Malisse, returning back to his old dominating self.  This might have been true if Roger’s back wasn’t ailing him.  All of a sudden, it hurt for Roger to move to his right.  The pace of his serve dropped from the mid 120s to the mid 100s.  He was basically pushing his forehand.  Although Malisse saw this happening, he didn’t seem to be able to adjust.  Back when Djokovic won the US Open, Djokovic also had a back injury which caused Djokovic to slow down his serve.  He ended up winning the fourth set easily against Nadal, despite the reduced game, which goes to show that maybe you don’t need all that pace to win.

Among Federer’s many streaks is that he’s never had to retire in a match.  He had to draw some hope that, under somewhat similar circumstances, Andy Murray struggled against Jarkko Nieminen in the second round, but managed to loosen up and take the remaining three sets easily.  The other streak Roger wanted to preserve was to reach his 33rd consecutive Slam quarterfinals.

Federer was still able to hold serve until late in the first set when Malisse broke, and it seemed certain that he would hold and take the first set.  Instead, Federer broke back, mostly on errors from Malisse who seemed scared to hit his backhand up the line, allowing Federer to hit soft inside out forehands to the Malisse backhand.  Federer was able to take the set to a  tiebreak and amazingly, won that pretty easily.

At that point, enough rain had fallen that they decided to close the roof affording Federer more time to get treatment.  He returned and took the second set rather handily, 6-1.  Federer lost the third set, 6-4, but despite being a break down in the fourth set, came back and broke twice (and threatened to break a third time) and took the set 6-3.

The only other match to finish without the roof was Mikhail Youzhny’s five-set win over Dennis Istomin, where Istomin broke in the fifth set and was immediately broken back.  Youzhny won 63, 57, 64, 67, 75.

Two matches were not played at all today.  David Ferrer was expected to play Juan Martin del Potro and Brian Baker was to face Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Andy Murray got up a set and a break against Marin Cilic who seemed to feel the effects of the second longest Wimbledon match ever.  Mardy Fish took the opening set over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  Florian Mayer took the first set over Richard Gasquet.

Finally, under the roof, Novak Djokovic easily beat his compatriot, Viktor Troicki, 63, 61, 63, in perhaps his most confident showing at Wimbledon.

The players that didn’t complete their matches today are scheduled to play early tomorrow.  Federer, Djokovic, and Youzhny all get a day of rest while this happens.