Federer celebrates 900th match with victory
If Roger Federer was trying to make a statement that 900 tour-level matches into his career he’s still at the top of his game then he couldn’t have done it better.
Federer reached the milestone yesterday in the second round of the If Stockholm Open, becoming the only active player to have played that number of matches, and marked the occasion with an impressive win over Taylor Dent.
The world No. 101 was far from the toughest competition Federer has faced over the course of his illustrious career but his dismissal of the American 6-1, 6-2 in just 51 minutes was nothing short of clinical.
The first set was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 18-minute rout and the second went by almost as fast as the 29-year-old moved to a 727-173 win-loss career record.
Federer, who is playing in Stockholm for the first time since 2000, faces a quarter-final match against Swiss compatriot Stanislas Wawrinka tonight.
Wawrinka has won just one of the six matches the pair have played against one another, at the Monte Carlo Masters in 2009, and enters this match after a tough second-round clash against the Netherlands’ Robin Haase, which the fifth seed eventually won 7-5, 6-7(6), 6-4.
Should Federer get through that match and a possible semi-final against either fourth seed Ivan Ljubicic or qualifier Ivan Dodig, there remains the potential for a final between the world No. 2 and French Open runner-up Robin Soderling.
Soderling, who will play Germany’s Florian Mayer in his quarter-final match tonight, defeated Federer in the final eight at Roland Garros this year in his only win against the reigning Australian Open champion in what is now 15 matches.
Federer has beaten the Swede twice since the French Open, in the US Open quarter-finals and at the same stage of the Shanghai Masters last week, brushing the world No. 5 aside 6-1, 6-1 in a match that almost made yesterday’s encounter with Dent look competitive.
Should the two meet in the Stockholm final, Soderling will surely have a point to prove in front of his home crowd.
Federer though has set his sights on taking back the world No. 1 ranking from Rafael Nadal yet again, and that should prove motivation enough for the top seed to make the Stockholm Open the 64th title in his impressive collection.
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