It was supposed to be a tennis match between two great exponents of their art, whose aesthetic elegance is a delight for the purists. It turned out to be more of a bruising bout, not in the literal sense.

Federer vs Wawrinka at the Rod Laver Arena. Swiss vs Swiss on Australia Day.

Blame and praise the faster surface, what you will. Each point was a rapier thrust. Punch for punch. Not baseline slugfest that had come define the modern game. The longest rally was 18 shots. A five-setter that had all the ebb and flow of an epic done and dusted in a little over three hours.

Single handed backhand vs single handed backhand.

Master vs pupil.

For long Wawrinka had been in Federer’s shadows. He had done quite a bit to emerge from it in the last three years — won three different Grand Slams. One more, and he would be a legend of his own. Yet, Federer was 18-3 head to head, 5-1 in majors, going into the match. And he has never lost on hard courts. Wawrinka had a point to prove.

After his quarterfinal win, Federer had spoken about how Wawrinka had begun to take less and less advice from him of late. On Thursday, he must have realised firsthand why.

For a good portion of third and fourth sets, Wawrinka hurt him. Badly.

Stan the Man’s single handed backhand packed a bit more firepower than Federer’s own. While Federer’s has more variation, Wawrinka’s booms off his racquet. And as he kept slicing it to his student’s backhand, Federer often left the court open to his right.

For a good hour, Wawrinka swung freely. Probably he felt tight in the first two sets, or maybe it was his knee. But Federer bled in the third and fourth.

“Midway through the fourth when I realized my game was fading, Stan was having the upper hand on the baseline, I thought, I guess that’s what I was always talking about. Things turn for the worse, you don’t know why,” the 17-time Grand Slam champion say later.

Then, Federer did something he had seldom done in his career. He took a medical time-out. While Wawrinka was respectful on the topic, Federer’s reply revealed a lot.

“I think these injury timeouts, I think they’re more mental than anything else … For the first time maybe during a match you can actually talk to someone, even if it’s just a physio. It maybe relaxed Stan, you know, 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 really did take the timeout because I thought, he took one already, maybe I can take one for a change, because I’m not a believer in any way that we should be allowed to take a lot of timeouts. But I took it after the set break.

“Yeah, people know I don’t abuse the system. I hope it’s going to stay that way in the future for me, too.”

It didn’t seem to have much effect on the flow of the game as Wawrinka still was forcing breakpoints.

Then, against the run of play, as it happened to Federer in the third set, Wawrinka was broken. It was the slightest ever so drop in quality, and that was all Federer needed to ride home.

As usual with Federer, reaching the final at the Australian Open puts him in sight of several records.  At 35 years and 174 days, he becomes the fourth oldest men’s player to reach the final in Melbourne. He equals Novak Djokovic’s record for most final appearances — six — at the AO.

The final will be his 28th in a Grand Slam and his 100th match at Melbourne Park. Above all, lifting the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup would extend his tally to 18 major titles.

Awaiting him there would be either Grigor Dimitrov or Rafael Nadal. One, like Wawrinka, an image of his own. In fact, he is called ‘Baby Federer’. The other, without whom he will never be Federer.

It promises to be one hell of a duel.