"All you're doing is fighting the fire. From that standpoint, the six months definitely gave me something in return. I didn't feel like I had to reorganise my life or my tennis. I just wanted to get healthy again."
The semifinal against Stan Wawrinka was not a perfect match, in the sense that neither man played his best tennis. Yet it was always compelling as a contrast of styles. Federer used his precision, his net skills and his creativity to keep Wawrinka off balance, and did it so well that he found himself two sets up and cruising.
That was the cue for the first of the night's two injury time-outs, each of which shifted the momentum dramatically. The first one belonged to Wawrinka, who seemed to be weeping as he left the court, but returned with his right knee taped up and a look of fierce intensity in his eyes.
Immediately, he started to strike the ball more freely, using the weight of his thunderous groundstrokes to bully Federer around the court. The contest was soon level at two sets apiece, and the momentum was only flowing one way.
So what did Federer do? He called his own medical time-out - an even longer one than the first, at eight minutes. Wawrinka was reduced to doing calisthenic exercises to try to keep warm, for it was already past 10pm and this was hardly one of Melbourne's tropical nights.
Such tactics are almost unheard of from Federer, who has now taken eight medical time-outs in 1331 matches - or one every couple of seasons. But his timing, as ever, was impeccable.
"I think these injury time-outs are more mental than anything else," said Federer. "For the first time during a match you can actually talk to someone, even if it's just a physio. It maybe relaxed Stan, just to be able to talk about I don't know what.
The same thing for me as well. You start chatting about it, how good or bad the leg is, how you hope it's going to turn around. That can leave a positive effect on you when you come back.
"I only did take the time-out because I thought, 'He took one already, maybe I can take one for a change', because I'm not a believer that we should be allowed to take a lot of time-outs. But I took it after the set break. People know I don't abuse the system."
Time-outs or not, the result would surely have turned out differently if Wawrinka had converted either of the two break points he held early in that fifth set. On both points, he found fine strong returns that landed only a few centimetres from the baseline, but Federer handled them superbly, producing clutch tennis when he most needed it.
Now the pressure seemed to reverse on to Wawrinka, who donated his own serve in the sixth game of the set via a double fault.
Federer needed only two more holds, and he duly delivered them, dropping just one more point on his serve as he forged on to a famous victory. At 35, he is the oldest man to reach a Grand Slam final since Ken Rosewall, then 39, at the US Open in 1974.
With the Williams sisters through to the women's singles final, this Australian Open will surely be remembered as the flashback slam.
"It's gone much better than I thought it would," said the man who came in with the unlikely seeding of No17. "That's also what I was telling myself in the fifth set. I was talking to myself, saying, 'Just relax, man. The comeback is so great already. Let it fly off your racket and just see what happens'.
I think that's the mindset I got to have in the final as well. A nothing-to-lose mentality. It worked very well, so I'll keep that up."
A grand career
• Age: 35
• Born: Basel, Switzerland
• Lives: Switzerland/Dubai
• Height: 185cm
• Weight: 85kg
• Plays: Right-handed
• Ranking: 17
• Career-high ranking: 1
• Career prize money: $136.04 million
• Career titles: 88
• Grand slam titles: 17 (Australian Open 2004, 2006-07, 2010; French Open 2009; Wimbledon 2003-07, 2009, 2012; US Open 2004-2008)
• Australian Open win-loss record: 86-13
• Career win-loss record: 1086-245
• Best Australian Open results: Champion 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010
