Federer had to work harder and longer on Wednesday to make their latest, much anticipated match a reality.

After the third-seeded Murray cruised past the unseeded Jérémy Chardy, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2, in the day's first men's quarterfinal in Rod Laver Arena, Federer needed five sets and five match points to finally avert the danger created by the powerful, consistently aggressive Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Since last season, Tsonga, the seventh-seeded French veteran, has dropped several kilograms and added a coach, the Australian Roger Rasheed, who once worked with Lleyton Hewitt and Tsonga's mercurial friend Gaël Monfils.

The changes seem to have done Tsonga's game good. Though Federer had not lost his serve in his first four matches in Melbourne, Tsonga, not renowned for his returning prowess, broke the Swiss champion five times.

And yet Federer still prevailed, 7-6 (7-4), 4-6, 7-6 (7-4), 3-6, 6-3, in a match filled with enough acrobatic volleys and overheads to make the former Australian greats in attendance, like Rod Laver, nostalgic for their good old days on grass.

Federer and Tsonga came to the net more than 100 times between them on a court that, by consensus, is playing slightly quicker than last year, and though the rhythm was often choppy, the shot-making was often spectacular as both men countered each other's frequent attacks.

"I wasn't missing much, but I was still missing something," said Tsonga, who saved four match points on his serve in the penultimate game before the second-seeded Federer finally slammed the door on the upset.

The question is whether Federer's exertions at age 31 will have any impact on his ability to handle the physical duel (or duels) in front of him. After years of chasing the game's major prizes without success, Murray beat Federer for the Olympic gold medal last year and later won his first Grand Slam singles title at the U.S. Open.

Though he has not always been satisfied with his level of play this year in Melbourne, Murray has conserved his energy intelligently, winning all five of his matches in straight sets, including Wednesday's against Chardy.

"He's got confidence in himself now and believes he can win a Slam each time," said Chardy, who defeated Murray last summer in Cincinnati before Murray won the U.S. Open. "You can feel the difference on the court. He gets less worked up, and in terms of his level, there were lots of times in the match where I had the impression I was playing well and it seemed he always had an extra shot.

"The return is always a bit deeper than you'd like. You can't really attack off it. He finds the zones of the court really well with his shots. Sometimes he's in a difficult position, and he still finds a zone that's going to bother you."

The ability to make the finger-snap transition from defense to offense is one of the hallmarks of this generation of leading players: from Federer and Rafael Nadal to Murray and Novak Djokovic.

In the absence of the injured Nadal, his Spanish compatriot David Ferrer was seeded fourth here, and the top four seeds have all made it through to the semifinals with Ferrer set to play the top-seeded Djokovic, the two-time defending champion, on Thursday night.

On a day when Serena Williams, the dominant women's player, was knocked out of the tournament by 19-year-old Sloane Stephens, the stability at the top of the men's game was all the more noticeable.

Tsonga was even bolder on this topic than he was on the court. "The girls, they are more unstable emotionally than us," he said. "I'm sure everybody will say it's true, even the girls."

There was a murmur of disapproval in some co-interrogational parts of the interview room.

"No? You don't think," Tsonga continued, apparently joking. "But I mean it's just about hormones and all this stuff. We don't have all these bad things. So we are physically in a good shape every time and you are not. That's it."