As the hours and the winners ticked by, and Roddick and the 31-year-old Aynaoui kept changing ends and punctuating their formidable shot-making with shrieks and grunts, it felt more like watching a rite of passage than a quarterfinal.
In the first half, as he was in Game 3, Hibbert was a formidable presence, altering shots he could not block and forcing James, in particular, to bang two short bankers off glass.
He is one stroke ahead of the formidable foursome of Vijay Singh, who shot 66; Mike Weir, who shot 67; and Paul Casey and Sergio García, who each shot 69.
At the other end of the rink, Boucher was both good and lucky, a formidable combination, in facing 29 Devils shots.
But Snow, who shut out the Flyers twice at the First Union Center last season, also stopped shots in overtime by two formidable Flyers scorers, Mark Recchi and Justin Williams.
He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run.
Steenson and Mieres both have formidable kicking abilities and the pair converted every shot at goal in the club's two pre-season games.
But the significance of this success goes beyond the Cincinnati area, highlighting the sort of pragmatism and creativity that we need to draw on nationally if we are to have any shot at digging ourselves out of this formidable hole.
Despite the final score and a 25-18 dinadvantage in shots, the Canadiens still seem like a formidable opponent.
He picked his shots of defiance with some strength of mind – and some formidable technique – but the problem was that the rest of the field and, most notably, Mickelson kept coming.
