Roger Federer continued his spectacular run of success as he clinched his 19th victory in a row, and his 44th in 46 matches, with an easy 6-1, 6-2 win against Feliciano Lopez that carried him to the semifinals of the Qatar Open on Thursday.
Federer’s success against the most successful left-hander on the tour was improbably quick even by his own exceptional standards, lasting only 51 minutes and reducing his talented opponent’s game to fretful confusion.
So fluent was Federer on his once slightly weaker backhand wing, so easy was his court coverage and so comfortable his stroke preparation that Lopez increasingly felt under pressure to attempt more.
Mistakes, unsurprisingly, followed.
The seventh-seeded Spaniard won his opening service game but then dropped serve twice in a row.
When he did so for a third time at 1-1 in the second set, in a game in which he put a smash into the net from only eight feet away, the match ran away from him.
It was easy to sympathise, for almost the only unforced error that Federer made was to bounce the ball on his shoe while preparing and seeing it roll away into the clutches of a ball boy.
”It’s fantastic when you hit one of those backhands like I did in the final game,” admitted Federer.
”But I don’t want to say I am improving already this year. The off season was very short and I hope I can find time during this year to work on my fitness. I didn’t really have time for that in the off season.”
Federer, who in 2004 became the first man for 16 years to win three Grand Slams titles, and who won a record 13 titles in one year, now looks headed for the 23rd of his career.
He next plays improving Russian, Nikolay Davydenko, who appears to have gained still further in mental strength since saving three match points to win the Kremlin Cup in Moscow in October, and this time made another dramatic recovery.
The sixth-seeded Ukrainian-born player recovered from within a point of going a set and 0-4 down to Sebastian Grosjean, the third-seeded Frenchman, before winning 2-6, 6-3, 6-2.
The other semifinal is between Ivan Ljubicic, last year’s runner-up from Croatia, and Albert Costa, the former French Open champion from Spain.
Ljubicic, so often a resolute campaigner, overcame a tricky wind on an outside court and the burgeoning talent of Costa came through when Fabrice Santoro retired at a set and 0-3 down in the second.
The former champion from France had pulled a thigh muscle in his marathon win on Wednesday against his 18-year-old compatriot Gael Monfils. — Sapa-AFP