Roger Federer stomps over Potito Starace in opening round – Davidoff Swiss Indoors 2011
A local hero and third seed here, Roger Federer overpowers early resilience by the Italian Potito Starace in straight sets at the Davidoff Swiss Indoors 2011, an ATP World Tour 500 series event taking place on the indoor hard courts
in Basel, Switzerland. He registered a 7-6(3), 6-4 score line over his fellow 30-year-old Starace to advance into the second round on Monday.
A former world number one, Federer improved his record here by 38-7 after triumphing over Starace, ranked fifty spots below him, for the sixth straight time. He not only maintained his winning record against the Italian but also
secured a second round spot at St. Jakobshalle.
After defending the only breakpoint faced, the seeded Swiss comfortably held entire serves. Despite failing to find any breakpoint opportunity and dragging the set to a tie-breaker, Federer prevailed in it to clinch the opener
with a 7-6(3) win. He also spilled more unforced errors and clobbered an equal first serve share of 61 percent. However, the Swiss registered a spectacular 88 percent win on it.
Federer kept momentum rolling into the final set and quickly bagged in entire serves without facing any hindrance. Spicing the set further, the Swiss super star founded three breakpoint opportunity and converted one to his advantage
to seal the success by winning six games to four. He got the desiderated break in the opening game of this second set.
"Rust showed more on the returning side, trying to see the pace of the ball or being there and anticipating maybe was just missing a bit today," said the Swiss Master. "Instead of getting me 30-all chances, I was stuck at 40/15
very often and that’s a tough place to make breaks…In the second set I started to feel a bit better with confidence, first set in the pocket, but I still thought Potito played a good match and made me work extremely hard today."
Next up for the Swiss Ace is the winner of the match between Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil and Jarkko Nieminen of Finland. Federer can easily surpass these challenges if he plays in a similar way and can bid for a fifth title at home.
Eighth seeded Victor Troicki faced a different fate as he exited from the opening round. He made quick in-roads and pocketed the opener but stepped off gas in the decider to suffer a 6-4, 6-7(8), 2-6 defeat against Cypriot Marcos
Baghdatis. The Serb fought back hard for two hours and forty-three minutes but was eventually upset by the 26-year-old Cypriot.
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