Roger Federer takes on Indian wild card Devvarman in 2011 Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship
Swiss maestro, Roger Federer opens his campaign in the 2011 Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Tuesday, playing his opening round match against an Indian wild card entrant, Somdev Devvarman.
Ranked second in the world, Federer is the top seed for the tournament in the absence of world number 1, Spaniard Rafael Nadal. Nadal is still recovering from a thigh injury he sustained at the Australian Open last month.
Four time Dubai Open champion, Federer, will be looking to win his fifth title here. Federer started the season with a title win at the 2011 Qatar ExxonMobil Open. He lost to Serbian, Novak Djokovic, in the semi-finals of the Australian Open last month.
Federer did not feature in ATP Dubai last year, which means that he has no pressure to defend any points for this week. Each and every ranking point he gains here will be added to his total ranking points further increasing his lead against world number
3, Serbian, Novak Djokovic.
His opponent is the rising Indian star, Somdev Devvarman, who rose to his career best ranking of 79 this week. Indian tennis fans are excited about the match.
As soon as news broke out in India that their top ranked tennis player is drawn to play, 16-time Grand slam champion, and considered one of the best players the sport has ever produced, Roger Federer, it spread like a bush fire through the Indian tennis
community.
"On the weekend, I had been joking that I would play Roger Federer in Dubai", Somdev said. "That's how it turned out. I'm excited to be playing one of the greatest players. It is a huge opportunity. I'm looking forward to going out there and giving it my
all. My job will be to fight for every point and try and win the match".
Somdev, who was born in Guwahti, Assam but now lives in USA, said "I'll be trying to win the match. I have to play well, play my best tennis and then with a little bit of luck I may be able to pull it off".
Somdev is having a good run these days and has performed well during the last twelve months. He won Gold medals for his country at the Common Wealth and Asian Games last year. He also played the final of ATP World Tour 250 in Johannesburg couple of weeks
back and with that broke back into top 100.
This is the first meeting between these two. Somdev will be looking to post the biggest win of his career but Federer is surely the favourite to go through to the second round. Winner of this match will play either Russian, Dmitry Tursunov, or, Spanish Marcel
Granollers, in the second round.
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