Federer/Wawrinka progress by taking out Benneteau/Gasquet at the BNP Paribas Open 2011
Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka, the Swiss dream-team, defeated France’s Julien Benneteau and Richard Gasquet in a tough tie today at the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens. The match, which lasted an hour and 20 minutes, saw dominance see-saw between the two teams until singles World number 2 Federer and singles World number 14 Wawrinka finally sealed the match 6-3, 4-6, 12-10.
Federer and Wawrinka are an unranked team here. Both are generally singles players who seldom team up. When they do so, however, they are a lethal combination. In the Beijing Olympics 2008, the duo paired up to win the Gold Medal in Men’s Doubles Tennis for Switzerland. In their last match, they took out the second seeded pairing of Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor, the doubles World numbers 6 and 3 respectively.
Gasquet and Benneteau are the 92nd ranked doubles team in the World. They last played together at the Australian Open, where they too upset Mirnyi and Nestor. Unseeded here, they were never likely to take on Federer and Wawrinka and defeat them.
The French pairing started off the match serving quite well. They landed in 78 per cent of their first serves correctly, compared to the 67 per cent their opponents managed. Federer and Wawrinka were however much better at converting serves into points, and won 63 per cent of both their first and second serve points. The Frenchmen did not win any points on their second serve at all and only managed to hold their first serve on 12 points out of 21. This naturally put the Swiss duo in front, and they capitalized by creating 5 chances to break. After getting one break they looked well on course to wrap things up, but Benneteau and Gasquet stirred things up by breaking right back off the only chance they got. The Olympic Gold medalists had too much momentum though, and broke for the second time in the set to wrap it up 6-3.
The second set was a much closer affair. The Frenchmen still landed in more first serves than their opponents, 63 per cent to 57 per cent, but were very slightly worse at getting points. They won 67 per cent of their on-serve points, compared to the 68 per cent the Swiss team managed. Timing, however, was everything, as the Frenchmen obtained a crucial break to take the set 6-4.
With the set score tied at 1-1, the match went into tie-break. Here the Swiss pair took full advantage of their singles prowess and won every single point off of their first serves. Winning 8 out of 11 points on serve in all, they needed two mini-breaks to overcome their opponents. Gasquet and Benneteau fought to the last, but weak first serves left them at a distinct disadvantage. So the tie-break ended 12-10, and Federer and Wawrinka moved into the quarters.
The Swiss duo next faces either Knowles/ Mertinak or Erlich/Ram. If they get through that test, they potentially face Nadal/Lopez in the semis. With the prospect of a Federer/Nadal Final looming at the singles too, this would just be icing on the cake for tennis fans.
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