Roger Federer is recently playing a very aggressive tennis, but that didn’t really happen against Stepanek to put him in serious troubles.
Probably Roger had the wrong attitude against the Czech and he had the idea of just going on the court and control Radek.
The tactic worked well in the first set when Stepanek committed lots of unforced errors, then something changed. In the second set Radek was much more solid and Roger kept on being rather passive. So the Czech won the second set and he was up 2-0 in the decider. At that point Roger changed his tactic to be more aggressive and he won 5 consecutive games.
When the Swiss went to serve for the match he squandered 2 match points (40-15) to surrender the service game. Then Roger broke back Radek to win the decider 6-3. Match Stats
Roger: I was not aggressive enough
“I started to understand what I was doing wrong. Which made me maybe play a little bit tentatively from the baseline, what made me not make enough shots and why I wasn’t playing as aggressively as I wanted to. I couldn’t find the right balance between offence and defence.
“It was almost a bit too late for everything, but I kind of hung around and I took the positives out of the match. Radek did a good job of putting the pressure on me and mixing it up. From that standpoint, it was a really difficult match. I’m very pleased to come through.”
Next vs. Rosol
Roger will play for the first time Lukas Rosol in the 3rd round.
