"Simply awesome" is not a phrase I use often. Indeed, I do not remember the last time I uttered it in any context. But what more can you say about Roger Federer without using those two words?

His performance against Andy Roddick was simply awesome. I have watched hundreds, if not thousands, of tennis matches over the years, many of them with the great players in the centre of the action, but I cannot ever remember such an enthralling one-sided match.

When John McEnroe crushed Jimmy Connors 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 in just 80 minutes in the 1984 Wimbledon final, it was described as the greatest demolition of a great champion. Federer's 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 crushing of Roddick in Melbourne on Thursday was way better than that. And Connors, who is Roddick's coach, must surely have been remembering his own humiliation and could empathise fully with what was happening to his charge.

The match was billed as the semi-final which should have been the final. All the more so following Roddick's victory over the Swiss in the Kooyong warm-up event before the Ausralian Open began. But in the semi-final, Roddick was no more than an extra in a Hollywood epic.

With his performance, Federer's incredible display of shot-making was more than enough to get the crowd salivating at every brilliant point. This was a very rare occasion on which the appreciation of greatness and the spectacular shot-making of one player more than made up for what we usually expect of a good tennis match -- a titanic duel between two evenly-matched opponents.

And to top it all, he makes it look oh-so easy. I have likened Federer in the past to a boa constrictor. He demonstrated those qualities perfectly on Thursday, as after the first set when Roddick still looked as if he had a chance, Federer turned on the pressure to close out the set and then he finished off the match there and then.

The relentless brilliance of Federer's continued play and his almost flawless execution was a sight to behold. He was not at all affected -- as so often happens to players at all levels -- by Roddick going off the boil. Federer quite simply raises his game when he needs to do the business. He has all the shots and then a few more which he invents to fit the bill when the situation call for it.

I predict that in the unlikely event that Tommy Haas gets to the final, it will be an even shorter and more one-sided affair than the Roddick's demolition. But if Fernando Gonzalez makes it, the match will start out fairly evenly before Federer closes it out with clinical efficiency. And this will be just the start of  an epic year which he hopes with be crowned by the illusive Grand Slam.