"You were sensational today"

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"You were sensational today."

With those words, the British cat doing post-match interviews at Wimbledon summed a match up, and reminded us what we used to see all the time from Roger Federer.

Federer's semifinal match with Novak Djokovic, aside from a thrilling third set, was mostly boring. One of the two players got a break, and was not broken back. For the first time in a long time, it was one of the business-as-usual matches that was routinely seen from Federer in his hay-day, when I got into tennis.

Djokovic perhaps did not play at his top level. He didn't seem to have the willingness to brawl that has made him the No. 1 player in the world Friday morning. But that's also because Federer played such a dominant match, he never could get comfortable.

It's the type of thing that doesn't happen often anymore in men's tennis. Typically when we see a phenomenal individual effort, it's coming from Djokovic or Nadal, and it comes in a form very different than that exhibited this morning. When those two are at their best, it manifests as an unwillingness to break, this sort of invincibility to losing even individual points. With Federer, it is more like total control and comfort with everything happening.

That was there today. Federer's serve was landing, his forehands were crisp, his slice backhand was landing deep and bringing him back into points. His greatness took Djokovic's fight out of the equation.

Whether that will be there Sunday to the same degree is yet to be seen, and is unlikely. But it's good to be reminded every once in awhile what the greatest really can be.