There were great matches of all kinds in 2016—brilliantly played, historically significant, emotionally wrenching. But none of them gave us that “Oh God, I can’t bear to watch this” feeling the way Roger Federer’s 6-7 (4), 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (9), 6-3 win over Marin Cilic in the Wimbledon quarterfinals did.

In general, the more times you find yourself hiding behind your couch—or burying your face in your hands—during a match, the better it is. And that was certainly true for Federer’s three hour and 17-minute tightrope walk across Centre Court. The seven-time champion fell behind two sets to love and had to make it through a seemingly endless series of must-win points to dig himself out of that hole.

“Obviously, the breaker was crazy,” Federer said of the fourth-set tiebreaker, which he won 11-9.

Tennis didn’t get any more thrilling this season than those 20 points.

But this match also had its sad side. What Federer couldn’t have known as he shook Cilic’s hand was that it would be his last win of 2016. Two days later, in the semifinals, he came out on the wrong end of another five-setter against Milos Raonic, and re-injured his knee in the process. That was the last we would see of Federer for the year.

For everyone who thought that tennis just wasn’t the same without him over the last six months, the 25-minute highlight clip above should come as a sight for sore eyes.

*****

—Aside from the drama to come later, this match also featured some thumpingly good tennis. From Cilic it came early; from Federer it came late. Cilic’s coach at the time, Goran Ivanisevic, said that he would need to play “magical” tennis to beat Federer at Wimbledon, and Cilic does his best to oblige. He takes longer swings and aims the ball closer to the lines than normal, and the echo in Centre Court gives his shots a satisfying thud. At the start, you can hear ESPN broadcasters John McEnroe and Chris Fowler talk about Federer as the favorite, but after a little while they begin to turn their eyes to the other side of the net. Cilic, it’s obvious, is putting together a special match.

Federer will finish with 67 winners against 24 errors, and Cilic with 59 and 36. Even factoring in Wimbledon’s notoriously generous stat keepers, this was an impressively clean match, especially when you consider the risk each man was taking. There were very few safe rally balls in this one.

—Cilic powers his way through the first-set tiebreaker and records his only break of the match to win the second set. Through the first two sets, he hit 12 aces and won 87 percent of points on his first serve.

“I just remember being in trouble the whole time,” Federer said.

Cilic keeps pounding in the third. At 3-3, he goes up 0-40 on Federer’s serve, and that seems to be all she wrote. We don’t see it here, but Federer saves one of those break points with a precarious half-volley, a shot that he mentions in his post-match interview as being a turning point. We do see him saving another of those break points with a strong topspin forehand that elicits his first positive emotion of the day.

Federer eventually held for 4-3, and the crowd roared. Cilic double-faulted and was broken in the next game, and Federer closed out the set with a backhand winner that produced an even bigger roar. In the span of 10 minutes, the match had turned 180 degrees. By the middle of the fourth set, McEnroe and Fowler had broken out the obligatory descriptions of “vintage Federer.”

—But Cilic doesn’t cave; even with a little dip in his play, he was still at a very high level. At 5-6, he reaches match point, which Federer wipes away with an ace. (Cilic reaches match point two other times, but we don’t see them here, probably because he misses service returns.)

Then comes the tiebreaker, which compressed a set’s worth of winners, aces, clutch shots and great gets into 20 points. At 7-8, Cilic bends low to thread a backhand pass up the line to save a set point. But at 9-9, Federer outdoes him with the shot of the day. Forced to run hard to his right to dig out a deep Cilic ground stroke, Federer—a squash player in his youth—chops it low and crosscourt, into a difficult spot. Cilic, anticipating something easier, moves forward too quickly and can’t control a forehand down the line.

Federer closes out the fourth set, and while Cilic fights bravely through the first seven games of the fifth, Federer has too much momentum, too much crowd behind him, too much history on this court and, simply, too much game. This was his 10th comeback from two sets down, tying him with Boris Becker and Aaron Krickstein for first on the Open era list.

—While Federer played Houdini, and dug himself out of trouble with his serve, he was helped immensely by Cilic’s return. On several big points, the Croat couldn’t put a second serve from Federer back into the court. He knew those shots had sealed his doom.

“Fourth set, I had a lot of chances, obviously,” Cilic said afterward. “Few match points. On a few of the occasions, returns of second serves...”

There, his voice trailed off.

“That was definitely a difficult one,” he concluded.

Credit Cilic for coming into the interview room and answering every question in full. As awful as it is to contemplate, this probably wasn’t the most disappointing moment of his season; that came in November, when he was unable to clinch the Davis Cup against Juan Martin del Potro, in a match that wound up at No. 3 on our year-end list.

“He’s one of the nicest guys on tour,” Federer said of Cilic when this one was over.

This nice guy definitely finished second in 2016.

“Today was epic,” Federer said. “Probably going to look back at this as being a great, great match I played in my career ... To win a match like this, to test the body, to be out there again, fighting, being in a physical battle and winning. It’s an unbelievable feeling.”

It was a feeling that Federer wouldn’t have again in 2016. But even in his least successful season, at 34 years old, he gave the sport its most memorable afternoon. We could barely bring ourselves to watch, but we could never turn away.