Who Is Alejandro Falla? Meet The Man Who Pushed Roger Federer To A Fifth Set In The First Round At Wimbledon

Just who the heck is Alejandro Falla? That’s the question Roger Federer and tennis cognoscenti everywhere are asking, with Falla pushing the six-time winner at the All-England Club to a decisive fifth set in the first round at Wimbledon, before collapsing late in the match.

Falla, who hails from Colombia, is 26-year old southpaw currently ranked 60th in the world. Words like “journeyman” and “unheralded” come to mind for a player who has never won a tournament in his career, and whose best result in a slam was reaching the third round of the Aussie Open this past year. Falla did have a bit of positive history at Wimbledon -- at least as much as someone who’s never advanced beyond the second round there can have -- after shocking then No. 9 seed Nikolay Davydenko in the first round at the All-England Club in 2006.

Falla jumped out to a staggering two-sets-to-none lead on Federer -- 7-5, 6-4 -- mixing in a hard-to-read lefty forehand with well-timed approaches to net. Falla wasted four break points at 4-4 in the third set, and then broke Federer early in the fourth, before visibly showing nerves at 5-4 in the fourth with the match on his racket, on the verge of what would have been the greatest upset in tennis history. Federer broke back to stay in the match, and after pushed on his own service game, Federer ran Falla the rest of the match, running away with the fourth-set tiebreaker 7-1 and taking the fifth set at love.

Indeed, had Falla manged to put Federer away, it easily would have ranked as the most unthinkable result in the history of the sport. Consider: Federer, arguably the best player the game has ever seen, playing on a surface and at a venue where he has been all but invincible the past seven years, against a more or less anonymous pro. Still, Federer managed to come back from the brink, and keep his hopes of equaling the illustrious Pete Sampras’ record of seven Wimbledon singles titles alive.