Roger Federer Narrowly Defeats Feliciano Lopez at the Madrid Masters 2011

By Marcus Chin
at Internationaled.org

Published: May 5, 2011

7-6, 6-7, 7-6. Without going too far into the details of Roger Federer's latest victory in his opening match against Feliciano Lopez, it would be suggested that scorelines like that just tend to stick out in the print.

Of course, it was far more dramatic even than that, with Federer edging past Lopez in the first set tiebreak 15-13, only to be dominated in the second, and then have to save a match point before winning the final breaker 9-7. It was, truly, a tale of tiebreaks.

What does one make of a match like that, filled with things lacking in precedent, at least in recent memory? There were, of course, more things that did have precedent, so lets start with them first.

There was the uncertain and erratic play, with which we have become accustomed to seeing in Federer. It was partly the speediness of playing at altitude, against a big-serving Spaniard (who himself was in no small way buoyed up by the fact of a home crowd), having come off a lay-off (if it can be put thus) of nearly two weeks from competitive tennis. Perhaps, too, there was the intangible element that the Magic Box had just witnessed in the match before a classic beatdown by his arch(ex?)-rival, Rafael Nadal, over Marcos Baghdatis, 6-1, 6-3.

At any rate, Federer seemed to exhibit the sort of play that saw him lose to Jurgen Melzer at Monte Carlo, and indeed, that marks him out as much less a player than he used to be. There were errors and inconsistent play here and there, and, as is becoming something of a pattern, the inability to convert momentum into a winning formula, as nearly happened in the third set tiebreaker at 5-5, having recovered from a 2-5 deficit.

Of course, this untidiness is nothing new. We have become used to an older, more wary, and restrained, Federer, playing sometimes too much out of himself rather than in. How then does a win like this merit anymore an article than a routine footnote of a pedestrian 6-3 6-3 first ro...

Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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