The sad ballad of Tomas Berdych

In this new era of men's tennis tumult, it's comforting to know there are still some things we can consistently rely on. Like, for instance, the familiar beats and outcome of a Tomas Berdych-Roger Federer match.

Like so many of his bouts with top players over the years, Berdych got the little brother treatment. He tends to get a couple good licks in early on, but always seems to end up in a headlock. Federer picked him apart - in straight sets, again - in the Australian Open quarterfinals on Wednesday. It was not time, it turns out, for Berdych to no longer be owned.

So here is Berdych, a 32-year-old at the tail end of his prime, who has been better and more consistent than all but five men's tennis players for the most part of a decade, who has routinely played into the second week at majors and made 16 Slam quarterfinals, but has precious little meaningful hardware to show for all that - just four titles above the 250 level, one Masters 1000 title, and one Grand Slam finals appearance (a straight-set loss). He is running out of time.

The reason his trophy cupboard is so bare, of course, is that the small handful of guys ahead of him in the pecking order have been merciless in their efforts to keep him down. Novak Djokovic is 25-3 against him, and until retiring from their Wimbledon quarterfinal last summer, had beaten him 12 straight times. Nadal is 19-4 vs Berdych, and beat him 17 times in a row between 2007 and 2015. Coming into Wednesday's clash, Federer was 19-6 against his opponent and on a run of eight consecutive wins. It's now nine.

It's baffling sometimes. Watch a Berdych match for just a few minutes, and you'll be shaking your head wondering how he hasn't won multiple Slams. He has effortless power and precise, textbook groundstrokes. He hits with consistent depth, moves fluidly (particularly at 6-foot-5 tall), and deftly changes the direction of the ball. He looks dominant, but his game seems to amount to less than the sum of its parts. What are you missing? Watch for a few minutes longer, especially when he's playing Federer, and you'll start to see it.

Even if Djokovic and Nadal have better head-to-head records against him, the shortcoming is never more glaring than when he's playing Federer. Because the latter's game is endlessly playful, creative, and improvisational, while Berdych's is astonishingly free of whimsy or guile.

Berdych rarely makes objectively bad decisions or false steps; his game is almost clinically rational. But he seems fundamentally incapable of straying too far from the formula, of becoming unpredictable. Big, flat serve up the T. Stretch the guy out wide, hit into the open court. Not much slice, little spin or pace variation that might muck up his opponent's timing, nary a drop shot. At a certain point, against an elite opponent's reflexes, power for power's sake doesn't cut it. He has nothing to threaten them with; nothing to do with all his strength.

After the match, he was asked if he'd come in with a different game plan against Federer this year after being flattened on the same court in 2017. Berdych shook his head.

"I just took it as another match," he said. "I tried to put the maximum of my tennis into it."

When you have Berdych's weaponry, you don't need variety to win, but missing a reliable Plan B, your margin for error shrinks and you need to be spot on. Berdych was just that in the first set against Federer. The ball exploded off his strings, he tattooed forehands that clipped the corners, and he had the Swiss on the run. He broke serve in his first return game, ran out to a 5-2 lead, and served for the set at 5-3.

And then he blinked, spraying a handful of unforced errors when he could least afford to do so, letting two set points come and go, and getting broken. And that was all it took for his momentum to evaporate, for Federer to come to life and put him in another headlock.

Federer had been a bit peevish, yapping at the chair umpire for docking him a challenge when the Hawk-Eye review system broke, staring down a line judge for forcing him to challenge a non-call on the baseline (a ball that landed about a millimeter long), and generally betraying a mild irritation that Berdych was pushing him, treating their roughhousing session like a real fight. After Berdych gave him that foothold, though, he didn't look back. He took the first set to a tiebreak, won it 7-1, and was never threatened again.

"Hung around," Federer said of that first set. "Had to get a bit lucky, a bit angry."

By the middle of the second set, Federer was being downright cruel. When he wasn't yo-yoing Berdych side to side with runaround forehands, or cracking serves beyond his reach, Federer was tormenting him with the very chicanery Berdych so noticeably lacks.

Four times, Federer hit backhand droppers that died in the exact same spot, in the deuce service box about three feet beyond the net, for winners. The fifth time, Berdych was ready for it, chased it down, and knocked it back ... only to duff Federer's ensuing lob into the bottom of the net. The sixth time, Berdych got to the ball while it was still kicking up, and smacked it back for a winner. That was on game point in what would prove his final service game. It gave him one last dignified hold before Federer served out at love.

Such is life for Tomas Berdych. With the rest of the draw in disarray, and no serious contender beyond Federer remaining, this would've been an ideal time for him to break through, a golden opportunity to notch a signature achievement before it's too late. He did about all he could without changing who he is. But alas, it wasn't enough, because Federer.

When he was asked after the match whether he felt his game had let him down, Berdych sounded very much like a man resigned to his lot.

"I wouldn't say it let me down," he said. "I think I played a solid match, played very good tennis, and I faced the best opponent that you can have. When I look at the draw, that's a bit sad, you know?

"But that's how it is, that's probably what you're going to find with my name in the draw. But that's alright, I'm happy with the way I played."