Roger Federer may have reached the third round of the Australian Open for the eighteenth straight year with a straight sets victory, but the 17-times grand slam champion is well aware that he will have to make a significant improvement to progress any further.
A sign of Federer’s frustration came towards the end of the match, the 35-year-old heard muttering “can’t put a f****** ball in the court” as he repeatedly made errors off his groundstrokes. It was his experience and aura that eventually saw him through 7-5, 6-3, 7-6 against American qualifier Noah Rubin, ranked No 200, in two hours and four minutes.
“I know I’ve got to lift my game a little bitRoger Federer
As the No 17 seed, Federer meets a higher-ranked player at the last-32 stage in world No 10 Tomas Berdych. Federer may have won their past five meetings and 16 of 22 overall, but Berdych has got the better of him at both Wimbledon and the US Open in the past.
“I know I’ve got to lift my game a little bit,” Federer said. “But then again, I haven’t seen Tomas play a lot [in Melbourne], to be honest.
“The court plays fast. He’s caused difficulties for me in the past on faster courts: Cincinnati, New York, Wimbledon, the Olympics in Athens. I know what he’s got.
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“Then again, I’ve played him here, played him on many occasions, as well, when it went my way. I have just got to play on my terms and really be focused on my own service games to make sure I don’t have any lapses there.”
Federer was cruising at two sets up against Rubin, the 20-year-old product of the John McEnroe Academy who won junior Wimbledon in 2014, but had to save two set points in the third set before closing out the match in a tie-break.
“That’s always the best-case scenario, if you can win your match in straight sets,” Federer said. “I was able to do that today. I think I was a bit more consistent than in the first match against [Jürgen] Melzer, where I ended up losing that second set after leading. I think I had a little bit better concentration.”
Angelique Kerber, the defending women’s singles champion, has not yet found the form that helped take her to world No 1 last season. Again, the German was pushed to three sets, the fourth time she has gone the distance in the five matches she has played so far this year, but prevailed with a 6-2, 6-7, 6-2 win against compatriot Carina Witthoeft.
This was a stark contrast to their meeting at Wimbledon in 2015, Kerber winning 6-0, 6-0 in the first round. She had looked on course for a straight-sets win here at 3-1 up in the second-set tie-break, before world No 89 Witthoeft won ten points in a row to level the match and then moved 1-0 up with a break in the deciding set.
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Witthoeft, aged 21, later admitted that the prospect of beating the world’s best player entered her mind at this point and it did her no good. She only won one more game as Kerber secured her progress to the third round.
“I was doing a lot of mistakes in the important moments,” Kerber said. “But at the end, I’m happy that I won the match. It was not easy. The conditions were also a bit difficult today. At the end, I won, and this is all that counts for me.”
Up next is a meeting with Czech Kristyna Pliskova, the left-handed twin of world No 5 Karolina, whom Kerber beat to claim her second grand slam title at the US Open in September. After living in her sister’s shadow for some time, Pliskova is now climbing the world rankings, currently sitting at a career-high of No 58.
“I played once against her a few years ago, and I know that she has a great serve as well,” Kerber said. “I will be looking forward to playing against her.”
