Michael Jordan shoes out. Darth Federer in.
Wearing his traditional all-black U.S. Open night outfit, Roger Federer rolled into the third round of the season’s final major with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 defeat of Sam Groth on Friday. Federer out-aced the big-serving Australian nine to eight while prevailing in one hour and 48 minutes. Groth led 4-2 in the third set, but the crowd favorite won four straight games to finish the job.
“There he should have like forgotten who he’s playing and all that stuff,” Federer said when asked about his opponent losing the third-set lead. “By then he’s in the match. I had my opportunities early on in the third, as well, so I was just hanging on. Maybe the pressure got to him a little bit just because of my opportunities I created.”
The 33-year-old Swiss generated 11 break-point opportunities over the course of the match and converted five of them. Groth was two for two on break chances against Federer’s serve, but it hardly mattered in the overall outcome of the match.
“It was an enjoyable experience,” Groth assured. “I’m pleased playing in front of a crowd as big as the amount of people here, so to play on a packed house on Friday night against the greatest of all time, yeah, it’s an unbelievable experience. To be honest, I feel I should have won the third set; game points at 4-2, game points at 4-all. I didn’t execute when I needed to.”
“What I like about these kind of matchups is there’s always going to be something unusual that’s going to happen, unusual shot-making,” Federer commented when asked about facing big servers. “You have to react rather than just always play percentage tennis. You just hope to get the other odd ball back. I like the mix of playing these kind of opponents and then totally different in the next match.”
Instead of an extremely similar opponent–whom Federer was expected to face in the next round–he will, in fact, play a totally different one. Marcel Granollers outlasted Ivo Karlovic in five sets to give himself a shot at the 17-time Grand Slam champion in round four.
Ricky contributes to 10sballs.com and also maintains his own tennis website, The Grandstand.
Topics: Marcel Granollers, Ricky Dimon, Roger Federer, Sam Groth, Tennis, Tennis News, US Open
@RD_Tennistalk REVIEWS THE @rogerfederer MATCH AS HE FLIES INTO U.S. OPEN THIRD ROUND- http://t.co/aylScLyS2G #federer #tennis #USOpen