2010 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals: Match Preview – Roger Federer vs. David Ferrer
Following Robin Soderling and Andy Murray will be the remaining two players of Group B: Swiss maestro Roger Federer and Spaniard David Ferrer. The two will be recreating their match in 2007 when the two met for the final match
of the tour finals in Shanghai.
The former world number 1 Federer comes into the event with four titles under his belt and an impressive 60-13 mark for the season. Although the Australian Open champion failed to bag another Grand Slam win this year, he still
had a superb season with a Masters win at Cincinnati and title wins at Stockholm and Basel. His most recent title win was in Basel. He was also the finalist in three Masters events namely Madrid, Toronto and Shanghai.
Federer qualified for the London finals on August 30th following his first round win over Brian Dabul in the United States Open. This is the Swiss’s ninth consecutive qualification for the season finale. He made it to
the final match for five consecutive years from 2003-2007 and with the exception of 2005 won the title on all the rest of the occasions. Although Federer’s performance took a turn for the worse mid season, it seems the maestro is back in full form to take
on fellow players in the season finale. He said, “This is a huge tournament for me. It’s a goal for the entire season trying to make it here, and once you make it here, trying to beat fellow Top 10 players, which is always fun to play against and face off
at the end of the season. You hope you can save [your] best for last.”
Federer has played more matches than any of his fellow contenders in the last two months. Still the Swiss claims he is in best physical form and has one more tournament left in him.
Federer enjoys a landslide victory over Ferrer when it comes to their head-to-head score. The two have met on ten different occasions before this and with no victory in Ferrer’s account, Federer leads with a 10-0 score. Despite
the numbers, Federer does not take Ferrer very easy. Talking about his round robin group he said, “Obviously it’s a tough group, but I think they’re even. Novak [Djokovic]’s in one group, Murray’s in one; I’m in one group, Rafa [Nadal]’s in the other, so I
think it’s quite even. In our group, it seems like we all know we’re playing well. Ferrer’s won Valencia, I won bunch of tournaments just now and won many matches, Murray won Shanghai and Soderling just won Paris.”
Earlier in the year, Federer had lost his world number two ranking to Novak Djokovic. Since then, however, he has reclaimed the position. He now sets his eyes to reclaim the world number one spot in the coming year and believes
London to be a stepping stone for the next season. Fans can expect nothing but the best from the maestro.
Although the numbers might say otherwise but Ferrer is no pushover, he comes into the event with two 500 series titles. He won one at Acapulco and then the recent win at Valencia. He almost matches Federer’s win-loss record with
60-21. He was also the finalist at three events this year: Beijing, Buenos Aires and a Masters event at Rome.
This is his second qualification in the year’s end championship, having qualified once before in 2007. Ferrer’s is the most impressive debuts of them all. He not only made it to the finals but he posted victories over legends Nadal
and Djokovic. Although he lost the final to, ironically, Federer, this time around the Spaniard hopes to do better. With luck on his side he might just break the Swiss’s winning streak to finally get one over him.
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