At 29, Roger Federer may be five years older than Rafael Nadal and six years older than Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, but it's hard to think of a time when he actually looks tired on the court. The same cannot always be said of the other three.
On Thursday afternoon, following a grueling two hour, 56 minute dogfight with Feliciano Lopez the previous evening (in which Federer saved a match point), the Swiss came back and looked remarkably fit in dispatching Xavier Malisse, 6-4, 6-3, in a tidy one hour and 10 minutes.
It was a solid display by Federer. The one aspect of his game that was a bit unusual was his extensive use of the drop shot. He lost a few points with it but won the large majority of them against the 30-year-old Belgian, who isn't as fleet of foot as he once was and often camps out well behind the baseline. Most enjoyable to watch in the gamut of Federer droppers is the one where he fakes belting the ball deep on a forehand approach shot, then cleverly cups the ball and plops it over the net.
Another shot he hit well today was the down-the-line forehand. When a right-handed player gets an opponent way wide to the deuce side, the cross-court reply often leaves a gaping opening down the line, over the high part of the net, as well as time to think about it. It's not the easiest shot to hit, even with a forehand, but Federer did it flawlessly against Malisse.
TV commentators noted that Federer seemed a little edgy because he wasn't as sharp as he could have been. It's more likely that he was obsessed with finishing quickly after the previous day's exertion. Malisse cooperated for the most part, but he did break back to 4-3 in the first set, serving well at times and occasionally clocking his lethal but inconsistent forehand.
Federer’s irritability was quite visible in the second game of the second set, when he pursued the issue of a lineswoman not admitting she had made an “out” call on a Malisse winner that clearly landed good. He was not disputing the correctness of the call, just the fact that the woman didn't come clean. During the subsequent change-over, he said to umpire Mohamed Lahyani, “all I expect is the chair to answer a question...you didn’t even look at me. I could be talking to a wall.”
Lahyani acknowledged Federer’s point. The Swiss went on to add that because the issue wasn't dealt with quickly, the crowd got into it and he looked bad.
All and all, it was a good outing by Federer after an extremely tough one—good preparation for a heavyweight match-up against either Robin Soderling or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarterfinals. Not to mention the possibility of Nadal in the semis.
—Tom Tebbutt