Roger Federer roared into the second week of The Championships with a clinical display of serve-dominated tennis against his old adversary David Nalbandian, brushing aside the Argentine, 6-4,6-2,6-4 in just one hour and 48 minutes.
It was the pair’s 19th meeting and 10-8 in favor of the Swiss at the beginning of the play.
There was little hope of Nalbandian reducing the margin as the Argentine stood nothing more than a mere spectator to the barrage of winners flowing from the Swiss’ racket.
Though he can take pride in being the first man to break Federer’s serve at this year’s Championships, the 2011 version of Nalbandian had no resemblance to the player who tormented Federer in their first five encounters.
Federer started the match on a solid note hammering nine aces in the first set. The Argentine had no answers to the winners bouncing off Federer’s racket and allowed the Swiss to break serve in the third game.
A brief lapse brought Nalbandian to level terms at 3-all. The 28th seed found his serve broken immediately and the set sealed in 36 minutes.
The second set started with a break of serve and saw the complete domination by Swiss. The sight of heavy bandaging followed by a vigorous massaging on Nalbandian’s leg clearly signaled that the match as well as time were running out of the 28th seeded Argentine’s hands.
Another break of serve in the set handed Federer a 2-0 lead in the match in 28 minutes.
The third set proved to be the most competitive one with Nalbandian making the Swiss fight off a break point in the third game. The set went on serve until the ninth game when a double fault and a wild forehand gifted Federer another break of serve(five in total) to serve for the match at 5-4.
The chinks in the armor of the Emperor finally exposed when he missed an easy overhead smash much to the amusement of the crowd. Following a 17-shot rally, Federer dragged a forehand long on his second match point while Nalbandian produced a dropshot winner on the third.
Roger Federer walloped his 14th ace of the match to bring up a fourth match point and sealed the victory with an unreturnable serve to set up a fourth round clash with the 18th seeded Russian Mikhail Youzhny.
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