Roger was close to another embarrassing defeat, but this time he survived.
The Swiss Maestro found himself 1-6 1-3 down against Tommy Haas playing an unwatchable tennis. Many were expecting another debacle from the Maestro that instead managed to hold tough and to achieve a decisive break when he was 2-4 down in the second set. Strange enough that was time for Tommy Haas to melt down to drop yet another service game nda lose the second set 7-5. The decider was a more “characteristic set” and the difference between the two players was just a break. Match Stats
Good Serve, Horrible conversion.
Roger finally found his serve to fire 10 aces, put 66% of his first serves in and win 71% points on the first serve. This is a very good indicator as it means that Roger is not battling with his back. Once again he was struggling with his break point conversion as he managed to convert only 3 break points out of 12. The return remained a weakness for the Maestro.
Roger: I was just hanging on
The Maestro wasn’t 100% satisfied by his performance to comment “I think I had too many of those small hiccups that kept on adding up, because overall I wasn’t playing terrible. I was just missing by a margin or putting myself in a tough spot.
Then on top of that, Tommy took advantage of it, played well when he had to… I was just hanging on, and I’m happy I did because it paid off. At the end, I’m very happy I was able to turn a match around like this.
Those are the matches I knew just kind of what I need right now. Every minute more in a match court is a good thing right now. It gives me a lot of opportunity in the next match to do better.”
Next with Rafa
Roger will play Rafael Nadal in the next match. Head to head is 20-10 for Nadal (22-10, with the exhibitions and 6-2 for the Spaniard on hard courts). Rafa is definitely the favourite… unless Roger’s tennis gets back to he one of the nice old days…