Roger Federer made fast work of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in his opening-round match at the Rome Masters on Wednesday, winning 6-4, 6-2. For most of the match Federer hit his forehand almost flawlessly, but there were a few hiccups at some notable junctures.
After earning a service break at 1-all in the opening set when Tsonga hit a pair of poor forehands, Federer sailed on through until he served at 5-4. That’s when his forehand tailed off a bit; he had to face a break point—saved with an ace—before wrapping up the set in 43 minutes.
The second set was much the same, as wayward Tsonga forehands gave Federer a break in the first game, and soon he was comfortably ahead 4-0, with two points for a triple break lead. On the second, Tsonga hit a poor drop shot, but Federer got a little too cute with his reply, pushing a cross-court forehand wide. Serving at 4-1, Federer missed a pair of inside-out forehands to give Tsonga two break points, which he failed to convert.
Two games later, serving for the match, there were more Federer forehand misfires, and he had to save three break points—two of them with good serves—before finally holding for the match. The last point was a royally clocked cross-court forehand winner, so emphatic that it almost made up for all the previous misses from that side.
While Federer was three for seven in break chances—compared to Tsonga’s zero for seven mark—the gap between the players felt greater than those statistics suggest. Everyone is so hyper-sensitive about Federer these days that there’s a tendency to over-analyze even the slightest indication that he is slipping. Is it better to just record that he played a solid match from start to finish in dispatching the No. 18-ranked Tsonga, or should it be noted that there were moments when his signature stroke was erratic? Maybe the answer lies in how well he plays in his next match, in the round of 16, against Richard Gasquet, the talented but somewhat tortured Frenchman.
For Federer, he has at least now banished the memories of his first match in Rome a year ago, when he lost, 2-6, 6-1, 7-5, to Ernests Gulbis on the volatile Latvian’s seventh match point. In testimony to Federer’s even-keel consistency, at age 29 he has only dropped two spots from No. 1, where he was a year ago. The gifted Gulbis, at 22, has fallen from No. 40 to No. 63.
—Tom Tebbutt