Roger Federer and Grigor Dimitrov will be squaring off for the seventh time in their careers when they battle for the title at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament on Sunday.
Federer is sweeping the head-to-head series 6-0, including 5-0 on hard courts and 2-0 indoors. Both of their previous indoor showdowns have come in Basel, where the Swiss treated the home crowd to straight-set victories in 2013 and 2014. They most recently faced each other last summer during fourth-round action at Wimbledon, where Federer dominated 6-4, 6-2, 6-4.
The 36-year-old ended up triumphing at the All-England Club for his second Grand Slam title of 2017, sending him on his way to the No. 1 ranking that he will regain on Monday. Federer needed only a semifinal showing this week in Rotterdam to clinch surpassing Rafael Nadal, and he has already gone one step further thanks to defeats of Ruben Bemelmans, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Robin Haase, and Andreas Seppi. Haase managed to take a set before getting double-breadsticked in their quarterfinal contest, while Kohlschreiber and Seppi were also competitive.
Dimitrov has not dropped a single set while advancing past Yuichi Sugita, Filip Krajinovic, Andrey Rublev, and David Goffin. The fifth-ranked Bulgarian was especially impressive against Rublev and his opening set against Goffin showcased stellar tennis from both parties before the Belgian retired in the second when ball ricocheted into his left eye. Dimitrov is now 10-2 this season with a semifinal finish in Brisbane and a quarterfinal performance at the Australian Open.
Although Federer had already achieved his main goal in Rotterdam, he still looked relatively motivated against Seppi and turned in a solid display of tennis. That is bad news for Dimitrov–albeit not as bad as his hopeless head-to-head history against the 20-time major champion. The underdog’s current form is such that he should be even more competitive than Kohlschreiber, Haase, and Seppi, but Federer will likely cap off his memorable week in appropriate fashion.
Pick: Federer in 3
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WYG?
Reckon Dimitrov will win this one. Fed has not been that impressive this week and as he said himself he “doesn’t feel like the best player in the World”. Will be a great final!
Fed’s just OK (not his best) is better than that of the others in ATP! That is how good the GOAT is! Fed’s 2 set beating of Seppi and Kohl shows that Fed can beat the best even though he may not be at his best!lol
Tomorrow’s final might be a tough 3 setter but Fed should win ML.
Fed’s utter domination of Dimi (Why not? fed should always dominate “BABY FED” right?!lol) is shown by his 6:) H2H advantage.
Like the over games to hit tomorrow. last 3 H2H matches also went over! “BABY FED”(Dimi) will give a tough 3 setter fight or 2 tight set fight pushing the over and then going down gracefully to “PAPA FED”!There is a reason why “PAPA FED” is called the GOAT!Ha,ha,ha…
So, is Dimitrov also a baby GOAT?
I think you’re basically right, Roger. When healthy, Roger is good enough now, having fully gotten used to the larger racquet and over the mental hump by winning 3 of his last 4 slams, for it to be likely that even less than his best will beat all others, including Nadal.
Of course Fed can still lose if the other guy plays out of his skin or Roger plays badly, but Fed’s good-but-not-great is still good enough to beat all others, most of the time.
Perhaps the only question that remains is whether he can now solve the Nadal problem on clay. I’m pretty confident that he can, certainly if he brings his best. But there’s only one way to find out.
Of course it all relies on lack of the rest of the big four.
Yes of course
As always. Of course.
#TWE2.0
#GoldenEraRIP
Fed now “thinking about” playing in Duabi
I think he will play Dubai. If he wins that and IW, the #1 ranking will be safe for awhile and I expect him to skip Miami. If all that happens and he’s healthy, I then think there’s a good chance he’ll play a clay masters, probably Madrid, followed by RG.
It wouldn’t necessarily be safe if he won Dubai and IW and pulled out of Miami… It would just mean that he defended all his points through the March Masters. However, If Rafa managed to win Acapulco defending final points, make IW final or semi when defending only 3rd round points, and then win Miami when defending final points, then that would be more than enough to put Rafa back at #1 post-Miami.
But then if Fed decided to play a clay Masters and RG, that would obviously likely make him #1 again after RG as he’s defending nothing in that stretch and Rafa is defending nearly the entire clay season. And then the pressure would be back on Fed to defend on grass….
Basically, I would be surprised if we didn’t see Fedal alternating between 1 and 2 through much of the season, assuming that they both are able to stay healthy. I certainly hope that it works out that way because that would give us SOME SORT of drama in the ATP.
I personally believe that Rafa is going to come out firing in IW/Miami. I thought he looked extremely good at AO. And if he takes that form into the clay season, it’s going to be another foregone conclusion in the clay season again as long as Novak and Andy are out, and we have absolutely no idea how Federer’s current game will work out on clay.
Roger currently has a lead of 2140 points over Rafa in the race to London, so between those two he’s obviously the favourite to finish YE #1 at this point.
I agree that there’s a chance for one more swap back between 1 and 2, but even that seems unlikely to me at the moment. And for the rest of the season I think it’s very likely that Fed, if he remains healthy, will remain #1 for most if not all of it.
There are two main reasons for this. First, Federer is the stronger player off clay right now, until proven otherwise, and most of the rest of the season is played off clay.
Second, Rafa is defending many more points than Fed through the USO.
Regarding the possibility of a swap in the near future, the main wildcard is Rafa’s health. At this point I don’t think anyone should be too confident about how he will play in Acapulco, IW or Miami. Even if he’s healthy, Roger will be the favourite in the sunshine tournaments, and if he wins both the most Rafa can gain is 420 points.
If Roger plays and wins Dubai, then either he will play the sunshine tournaments (and that’s all until grass); or, more likely, he will skip Miami and play some clay. Either way, if he wins IW he’s almost certain to be #1 at the end of the clay season.
Dimi won by retirement. Looking more like fed everyday.
#TWE2.0
#GoldenEraRIP
Fed in straight. GOAT!!!
Peter Fleming speculated that Fed might be injured after his win against Seppi, but I didn’t see it. Seppi can obviously bring it when he’s on, and that’s what he did for periods during the match. Fed defended well, and hit the big shots when he needed them, as he usually does.
I think the match with Dimi will follow a similar script: Fed in 2.
VERY interesting https://www.express.co.uk/sport/tennis/920368/Roger-Federer-injury-Andreas-Seppi-Rotterdam-Open/amp
On the Fed page it’s just “interesting,” but here it’s “VERY interesting,” huh?
Fleming doesn’t cite any evidence of injury other than that, in his opinion, Fed’s lateral movement isn’t as good as he thinks it was/should be. But, as I said above, Seppi was blistering the ball to Fed’s FH corner for awhile, and Roger was doing great just to squash shot it back a few times. Those balls would have gone by many other players cleanly.
It may be that Federer is not moving as well as he did last year (though I haven’t seen it myself). It would hardly be a surprise for a man nearly seven years past his prime. Until there’s some solid evidence of injury, there’s no reason to think Fed is injured.
Bahahahahha 2 and 2 over Dimitrov that’s all I have to say to THAT article
Congrats to Fed.
12:0 for the year, that’s even better than his 2017 start. is he going to repeat his 2006-2007?
Rest of fields, please show you are there to compete. Otherwise men tennis looks very predictable, this is really strange.
Fed played his best in the finals. He had a lackluster performance and was doing just enough to win and kept his best for the last. Similar like Shanghai last year.
Djoko use to do that in 2015 where he use to play just ok till he meets tougher opponents at later stages, then changes the gears.
Congrats Roger..
Congrats Fed the GOAT. The sunshine double will be intentesring. Hope Rafa comes back strong in Acapulco in preparation for IW and Miami!
After the first 2-3 games, I thought there was a chance that Fed was going to get blown off the court. Dimitrov came out looking like a bigger, stronger, younger, faster version of Fed, and was just crushing winners all over the show.
Dimi couldn’t keep that up, obviously, but Roger just hung in there and kept getting better. He served beautifully, and in the end it was maybe his best performance of the year. Now I know that Fleming was wrong about him being injured, because the way he was moving laterally to retrieve was just incredible. Even though it wasn’t a great match, it had a few amazing points -one which unfortunately was stopped because of an overruled call.
I now really hope Fed plays Dubai and IW, skips Miami, and then plays RG along with maybe Madrid. We’ll see.
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