SHANGHAI (AP)—Roger Federer routed No. 5-ranked Robin Soderling 6-1, 6-1 in the Shanghai Masters quarterfinals on Friday.
Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray also cruised into the semifinals, while unseeded Juan Monaco of Argentina took nearly three hours to oust Jurgen Melzer of Austria, who beat top-ranked Rafael Nadal on Thursday.
Federer and Djokovic will meet on Saturday for the 17th time, and the first since their stunning U.S. Open semifinal when Djokovic saved two match points in a five-set victory.
Soderling’s 14th loss in 15 matches against Federer was his worst yet, and it was his heaviest defeat overall since April 2009 when the Swede took only one game off Nadal at the Rome Masters.
Federer, who barely missed on Friday, punctuated his 54-minute performance with a Pete Sampras-like jumping smash after Soderling tried to flick a lob over him.
“He didn’t have his best day,” Federer said. “(What’s) important then is to take advantage of it and just be able to close him out because you would figure a top-five player like Robin finds a way at some stage during the match to crawl back.”
No. 2-ranked Djokovic beat the in-form Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-2, 6-3. The Serb broke early in both sets and fought off two of the three break points he faced.
Garcia-Lopez beat Spanish compatriot Rafael Nadal two weeks ago on his way to capturing the Thailand Open title and had won 10 of his last 11 matches, including against seventh-ranked Tomas Berdych in the third round.
“Garcia-Lopez has been playing some good tennis in the last couple of weeks,” Djokovic said. “He hits the ball really well from the baseline. He made me work for the points. Even though it looked comfortable I had to really be aware of the speed of the ball that was coming from the other side of the net.”
Djokovic rested briefly after the hour-long match before returning to the court to play doubles, which he lost. He’s playing doubles to prepare for the Davis Cup final against France in December.
No. 4 Murray handled an error-prone Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-2, 6-2 in 55 minutes.
The Scot dominated his opponent with a combination of big serves and delicate drop shots—with the exception of one from the baseline that bounced well before reaching the net. He broke the 12th-seeded Frenchman four times and only lost eight points on his serve.
“He’s a really good front-runner, but he struggled a little bit on his serve,” Murray said.
“From my side, I served well and didn’t give him any chances on my serve. I was hitting the ball really cleanly from the back of the court, so it was a good start.”
Tsonga, who recently returned to the tour after a three-month injury layoff, struggled to keep the ball in play, making 21 unforced errors and five double faults. He’s lost seven of his last eight matches against top 10 players.
Murray, who only last week rebounded from an illness that had dogged him since the U.S. Open, will face Monaco, who outlasted Melzer 6-7 (6), 7-5, 6-2 a week after losing to the Austrian in Tokyo.
Melzer was almost flawless in upsetting Nadal, but against Monaco he hit 57 unforced errors and dropped serve seven times.
Monaco was through to his first semifinals since February. After the French Open, he was off for three months with a left wrist injury and ended a five-match losing streak on tour this week.