World No. 5 Roger Federer defeated No. 26 Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-3,
7-6 (7) in the final match of the evening at the Lindner Family Tennis
Center.
Fifth-seeded Federer faces Marcel Granollers or Tommy Haas in the
third round. The latter players compete Wednesday at 11 a.m. on Court 3.
While Kohlschreiber threatened in the second set of tonight’s match,
Federer – who won only two of his 11 break points throughout –
persevered. He fell behind 6-7 in the second-set tiebreak but rallied to
overcome his German foe.
“Well, I think it was a match where I had to sort of just fight to
come through and hope get over the finish line sort of thing. I was
playing really well at times, and then sometimes it was maybe a bit up
and down. But, you know, assessing the performance overall, I’m very
happy,” Federer said.
“It’s good to be back and playing pain free. I don’t know, my mind’s
good. I was in a good place while I was playing, so it felt nice to win
at the end.”
Federer fired eight aces in a match that lasted nearly 87 minutes. He improved to 7-o all-time against Kohlschreiber.
Here’s what else he said:
So perhaps just a little bit of rust at the start there or during the match just because it was your first match in a while?
RF: Yeah, I mean, I guess so. I guess you could call
it rust even though I have played in Hamburg and Gstaad. I’ve had my
matches. Then again, we haven’t been on the hard courts for quite some
time.
I’ve had a tough last few weeks and months, so I mean, I’ve had to
fight many things lately. It’s more than just the rust on top of it.
Things are going well for me now, you know. I’m playing freely. I’m
hitting the ball okay actually.
I was quite surprised how well I actually did hit the ball tonight, so that’s a good thing hopefully for the next round too.
Q. Roger, the conditions were cooler than it’s certainly been in a while. Did that affect you at all?
RF: No. Actually, not so much. I think it was
actually for better tennis, to be quite honest, because the ball doesn’t
fly so much. You can control it better.
So I was happy how conditions were. It wasn’t really cold. I mean, it
was cooler for Cincinnati, let’s be honest. But the whole year has been
somewhat cooler. If you look back in Australia, it was colder. Many of
the clay court tournaments were colder as well. So it’s been a tough
year, if you consider all those factors in.
Even Hamburg, I started to play once really late at night, and that was cold then too at the end.
And did you like the opportunity now to have a day of rest?
RF: I think in my position right now it’s good to
have a day off, even though I could play tomorrow, no problem. God,
I’ve played so many matches back to back to back. I mean, six days in a
row and more.
In practice, I’ve just gone, before playing my first round match,
I’ve played every day since Wednesday also. So I’m used to playing
every day.
But to be able to reassess my game, look forward, prepare better for
the next round, I think it’s good to have a day off right now.
On playing with a new racquet…
RF: I just felt like, you know what, I’m going to
play with the old racquet through the US Open right now, and I’m going
to do more racquet testing when I have, again, some more time after the
US Open.
Yeah, I was playing for a month with the black one, but it’s a
prototype. At the end, I just felt like, you know what, right now I feel
like I need to simplify everything and just play with what I know best.
I have too many things on my plate right now. So I just said, I want
to definitely do my racquet testing and play more with the prototype,
but right now I just wanted it to be about forehands and backhands and
nothing else.
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