It was Gerry Weber Open record champion Federer who made the better start. Haas, who like his Swiss opponent had only had his serve broken once on the way to the final, lost his very first service game, but at 3-1 down, he started to find his way into the match. In the fifth game, he crowned his comeback by breaking back to make it 3-3, and from that moment on, he was the most aggressive player. Haas took more risks while the World Rankings number three committed more and more unenforced errors and had to defend the first two set points. The decision was then made in a tie break when Haas, was forced onto the back foot again, but after another rousing comeback, he converted his fourth set point.
Federer tried to raise the tempo in the second set. In the second game, the Swiss failed to take two break points and then he struggled more on his own serve than the German. The logical conclusion was that Haas broke to make it 5-4 at the end of one of the most spectacular rallies. Subsequently, the Wimbledon semi-finalist from 2009 held his nerve, served with the same consistency and benefited from one of the many unenforced errors from Federer to win his first match point. But Federer was a fair loser.
After claiming the title Haas said: "This has been one of the best weeks of my career, but I reckon I won't really appreciate what's happened until this evening.
"If someone had said to me beforehand that I was going to beat Roger Federer, probably the best player of all time, I would have thought they were mad!"
Federer has already enjoyed a memorable week at the German town in North Rhine-Westphalia after the main pathway up to the tennis stadium was named after him.
The 16-times grand slam champion is unlikely to be too concerned about failing to clear the final hurdle here as he would have fine-tuned his game for Wimbledon during the four matches he has played here.
Date: 17.06.2012, Source: Reuters and Gerry Weber Open
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