Federer defeated Thiemo de Bakker 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 and Wawrinka battled past Robin Haase 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(4) to put the visitors in control at the end of day one.
In the opening rubber the run of play was quickly established, with Federer holding serve easily and putting de Bakker under pressure even after the Dutchman landed his heavy first serves. At 11am, play was interrupted due to rain, but when play was resumed Federer seamlessly picked up where he left off. Federer broke de Bakker’s serve twice and only lost his once, after a careless game, which meant he had secured the first set 6-4 after 39 minutes.
The Swiss No. 1 then rushed to a two-break 3-0 lead and things started to look dark for the home player. The crowd wasn’t about to let anyone spoil their party however, let alone Federer, and started a Mexican wave.
Federer didn’t disappoint his many fans in red (Swiss) and orange (Dutch). The match yielded more than a few examples of Federer’s brilliance - some slice backhands in particular drew oohs and aahs. And besides being pretty shots, they also forced the tall de Bakker to stoop down with Federer pouncing on the high balls that followed. De Bakker managed to pull one break back, but never threatened to do more, conceding the second set 3-6.
For the third set, de Bakker had seemingly decided to go for broke and went up for the first time in the match at 1-0 and again at 2-1. Then Federer decided to up a gear, breaking the Bakker in the fifth game, never to look back. Just before the rain started pouring down again, he converted his first match point.
In the second rubber again it was close and again the winner came from Switzerland. In their sixth career clash, Wawrinka beat Haase for the sixth time to put Switzerland 2-0 up.
“He let me back into the match”, Haase said. ”It was more a matter of him playing poorly, than me upping my game. But at the end of the second set, I actually started hitting the ball well.”
But not anymore, as fists were pumped on court and off court. Grown-up men screamed Haase’s name and small boys looked up in shock, which turned into amazement, which turned into courage, which made them scream “Ro-bin Ro-bin!” for themselves.
Science has proved that momentum in sports doesn’t exist, but Haase seemed to have it nonetheless, and the prospect of at least one live singles rubber on Sunday – which was the most the Dutch hoped for privately – became real. At the other end of the court, Wawrinka started throwing his racket, which usually only makes bad things worse. But this might oddly have been the turning point: the Swiss took four of the next five games: 6-3 and a two set to one lead.
The fourth set saw both players reaching their highest level of the match, at least until five games all, when all of a sudden nervous error followed nervous error. At 5-6 down, Haase saved a match point on his serve to set up a tiebreak. But under consistent pressure from Wawrinka he ended up making one of those too many, netting a makeable forehand for the minibreak that Wawrinka happily made use of. He converted his third match point to take his team 2-0 up.
Reflecting on the opening rubber Federer said: “It’s nice to be admired for a nice looking game, one that looks effortless. But I put so much work into making it work. I try to get to balls and get them back. And for some reason it looks OK. And people like that.”
But to Federer, style is secondary. “I try to play fair and tough, the way I’m supposed to do it.” And this he did. “Thiemo didn’t play bad, I played pretty good. He got chances in second and beginning of the third, but in the end I had a little to much margin over him.”
De Bakker could only agree. At the press conference, he couldn’t help looking satisfied with his game, but he said that every time he played an average ball, “Federer hit a great one back at me”.
Said de Bakker: “There’s hardly any margin for error with him. He’s just so solid, he pushes you away so far, he moves unbelievably well. He makes you feel so uncomfortable.”
Tomorrow Robin Haase and doubles specialist Jean-Julien Rojer face the daunting task of beating Federer and Wawrinka to keep the tie alive for the Dutch. Swiss captain Severin Luthi tried his best not to seem sure of victory in the tie. “There’s no guarantees, even with Roger and Stan teaming up”, he said. “But we gave ourselves a good chance of being 3-0 up tomorrow, and I’m happy with that.”
Date: 14th September 2012, Source: Davis Cup
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