Once again it was three sets but it was not just because he was kept on court for more than three hours that Roger Federer’s semi-final meeting could be considered his toughest outing of this Wimbledon to date.

Tomas Berdych is a man who is not frightened by the prospect of beating his sport’s greatest ever player, not even at this venue that has come to be considered Federer’s backyard. A dour, mechanical type in many ways, he lacks the creativity of the men who have set new standards in tennis in recent years, but as a contemporary of ‘the big four’ has always had the capacity to beat each of them, with a dozen such successes to his name, including a momentous victory over Federer seven years ago which ended his run of consecutive Wimbledon final appearances that had stretched across the previous seven years.

Even when Federer looked to have taken control in the way he likes to, with an almost ridiculously flamboyant drive volley from just a couple of paces inside the baseline when the ball might well have been floating out on break point in the fifth game, he was unaffected. Berdych stuck to his game sufficiently to temporarily unnerve his opponent so that Federer produced a couple of double faults, the first to gift a break point and, after he had saved that to get back to deuce, the second after Berdych had earned a second break point. This was not to be the untroubled cruise to victory of previous rounds.

The loss of the tie-break, 7-4, might also have weakened the resolve of a lesser individual, but instead Berdych ground his way through the second set towards another tie-break. Federer had still to drop a set in the championship, but the tension he was feeling was manifesting itself in some terrible wastes of challenges on line calls and more frequent celebratory fist pumps after important points than is customary from one who generally reserves that for the end of sets and matches.

This time the deciding game featured yet another dreadful Federer challenge after he had taken the first point, a double fist pump after he had moved into a 5-1 lead and a double fault which brought it back to 5-3, however a change of gear, serving and volleying, had the desired effect to grant him breathing space at 6-3 and when Berdych netted a backhand two points later the result was now inevitable.

Not that the Czech made it easy for him even at that point, but a break of serve in the seventh game, just the third by either man in the course of the match was followed by a love service game, taking Federer to the brink of a historic place in the final that he duly clinched in his next service game.

Few are better placed to assess just how well Federer is playing than a man who first played against him in 2004, winning that match against, even then, the top seed at the Athens Olympics and whose first encounter with Federer on the Wimbledon grass was two years after that. Berdych reckons he is at the top of his game once more.

“It’s very difficult. I don’t see anything that would indicate that Roger is getting older or anything like that. I think he’s just proving his greatness in our sport,” he eulogised.

“I think I played really good tennis throughout the whole tournament, but unfortunately faced a guy that is playing by far the best tennis right now. If you look at other guys who are 35, 36 I think you can very clearly see that the age and the years on tour are affecting them, but not with him.”

Much has been made of the length of Federer’s lay-offs since, for the first time a year ago, he began to have some serious physical issues. However it is also clear that the style of his play is a factor in his longevity, the fluid nature of his movement appearing to make fewer demands on his joints than those of his greatest rivals.

To that end it was apt that another of the sport’s great stylists, eight time Grand Slam champion Ken Rosewall, was on Centre Court last night to witness Federer’s latest achievement in becoming the first man to reach 11 finals in the same Grand Slam tournament.

For the great Australian Wimbledon was the one that got away, some 20 years separating his first appearance in the final as a teenager when both his age and playing style made it seem certain that he would win the title one day and the last of his four appearances as the grand old man of the sport a full 20 years later at the age of 39.

Given the way he has performed at this tournament, several years since some of the supposed experts in the sport had concluded that he would never win another Grand Slam title, it is almost conceivable that Federer might one day beat his record of being the oldest man to contest a Wimbledon final and, a couple of months later in 1974 at the US Open, the oldest to contest a Grand Slam final.

For now, however, following the Australian Open win with which he readily admits he surprised himself in January, his principal target is the eighth Wimbledon title that will separate him from Pete Sampras and William Renshaw as the most successful man to have played here and the 19th Grand Slam triumph that will make it ever more unlikely that Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic, currently with 18 and 12 apiece, will ever catch him.