It was one of the strangest grand-slam matches of Roger Federer’s stellar career. When Marcel Granollers stormed 5-2 ahead in the opening set, eyebrows were being raised. Then the rains came, hard enough to force a delay and a two-hour stoppage.
When the match got going again after the break, it was won by the 17-times grand-slam winner 4-6, 6-1, 6-1, 6-1.
He will play Roberto Bautista Agut, the No 17 seed from Spain, who beat France’s Adrian Mannarino 7-5, 6-2, 6-3.
“Well, I guess played better after that. But then again, the first seven games all happened very quickly, “ the Swiss said.
“I think the biggest difference was the wind. It was quite windy when we got out. When we came back, basically it was gone. It also felt quite different because the wind has that effect of air-conditioning a little bit for the players; whereas when it’s not windy you really feel the humidity and the heat. So I think that was a big change.
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“The court might have played a little bit slower because of it cooling off from the rain. And for me personally, I just tried to play solid, you know, figure things out a little bit, because he did come out and play really aggressive. He served well.
“He was doing a lot of things really well. It was just, for me, going to be one of those things to like weather the storm and see if he could maintain that level of play or not and if I could lift my game up and see how that matched up. I think overall it worked out great at the end.”
Elsewhere, Grigor Dimitrov recovered from losing the first set 0-6 to win in four against the flighty talent that is David Goffin, the Belgian.