That was a narrow escape!

Roger Federer defeated Borna Coric in the Indian Wells semifinal after being extremely close to defeat.

What happened?

After losing the first set, Roger was broken at the beginning of the second set to find himself on a desperate 5-7, 2-4, 15-40 scoreline in the 7^th game. Eventually, Roger held his serve before conquering the following 4 games and bring the affair to the decider.

The 3^rd set was similar to the 2^nd. Roger was broken at love in the first game, but this time he broke back immediately (1-1). Things got extremely complicated once more for the world no.1 when he was broken in the 7^th game (3-4). At that point, Coric had 2 opportunities to hold his serve and get a decisive 5-3 lead, but he failed, and eventually, he imploded to lose 10 consecutive points with Roger winning the last 2 games at love.

The final score was 5-7 6-4 6-4, and the match ended after2 hours and 20 minutes.

A new record

After this win, Roger has improved his personal record of the best start in a season as the Maestro has now won 17 consecutive matches in 2018 improving his previous best in 2016 when he won the first 16 contests.

Why Roger decided not to attack too much

Federer also explained his strategy and why at a certain point he decided to stay in the rallies. The Swiss commented

“I think trying to understand Borna’s play because he absorbs a lot of power very easily. He’s a great retriever. It became a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. And when you’re thinking you can play offense all the time and then he catches you off-guard and you have to go back into defense, I felt like maybe, in the beginning, it wasn’t happening naturally.

I was just hoping that through tougher rallies and staying in the match for longer, I would start to feel better in defense, particularly because in the beginning it wasn’t quite there.”

The final against Del Potro

Roger will face Juan Martin Del Potro in the final after the Argentine had an extremely comfortable semifinal against Milos Raonic with a 6-2 6-3 win. The head to head is 18-6 for Roger that also leads 7-2 on hard courts.