If you tuned into the Madrid telecast today because you wanted to see Roger Federer driven into the ropes and battered and bloodied with body punches, you were a day too late. This was not Milos Raonic he was playing, but a very soft Richard Gasquet—the Frenchman who's more or less gone from being "Baby Federer" to someone more like the anti-Federer, mostly because he's failed to live up to the promise and hype that accompanied him onto the pro tour just about a decade ago.
Federer struggled against 21-year-old Raonic the other day (it would be hard to call the hard-charging, 6-foot-5 Canadian the "baby" anything), barely surviving in a third-set tiebreaker. Today, he utterly dominated Gasquet and stole away with nary a blue perspiration-stain on his socks or shorts, 6-3, 6-2. But it wasn't as close as those scores might indicate.
The Swiss won a whopping 86 percent of his first serve points, and his winner-to-unforced-error ratio was better than two to one (37-18). Gasquet, by contrast, made 13 unforced errors and hit but 11 winners. The Frenchman, seeded No. 14, saw just two break points and failed to convert either.
You can record an assist to the blue clay, which once again rewarded the more aggressive player, especially in the serving department. It was a terrible match-up for Gasquet, whose shortcomings include a tendency to play passively from too far back in the court, even when returning serve—a habit that forces him to rely to an inordinate degree on spectacular shotmaking. Was it a coincidence that on this same day, Gasquet's countryman, Gael Monfils, also got waxed (6-1, 6-1), by Tomas Berdych, who also serves big and has an aggressive mindset?
You could see the handwriting on this wall from early on, although at a total match time of just over 58 minutes, all of it was "early on." Federer bagged his first break in the fourth game to go up 3-1, and by the 20 minute mark of the match he led 5-2. At 27 minutes, the first set was over.
Any chance that Gasquet would marshal his resources and make a fight of it was dealt a severe blow when he double-faulted away the first game of the second set. By then, it seemed that his attention was, shall we say, tepid. It's not like Gasquet tanked; he is, after all, a pro. But I've seen very few recent matches in which the outcome seemed so predestined. The only flicker of serious resistance Gasquet mounted was in the fifth game, when he was already trailing, 1-3. Tellingly, it was during one of Gasquet's own service games—and a somewhat typical one if you're interested in Gasquet at his most baffling.
At 15-all in that one, Federer hit a semi-chop backhand to draw in Gasquet, then fired a backhand pass down the line for a winner. Gasquet double-faulted the next point to fall behind 15-40, and it seemed another sure break. But then Gasquet fed Federer a maddeningly neutral ball down the middle, which Federer clubbed long in his eagerness. A service winner then got Gasquet to deuce.
The next point was barely started when Gasquet hit a sort of scoop-forehand approach shot from near his own baseline and charged the net. Federer replied with a cross-court backhand pass winner. Gasquet surrendered the second break of the set when he took a big cut at Federer's service return but needlessly drove the ball out.
If you want to find fault with Federer's performance, you could chide him for letting two match points slip away when he served for it at 5-2, 40-15. He made a pair of errors, then made a mess of a short, chopped backhand semi-drop shot with Gasquet way out of court to give the Frenchman a break point.
I suppose he then remembered that he's Roger Federer, and he ended the match in symbolic fashion—bang, bang, bang, three aces. It brought his total to 10—not bad for nine service games on clay. Even blue clay.
—Pete Bodo