Federer surges into Quarter-finals

Five-time champion Roger Federer sent out a powerful message to his US Open title rivals on Monday night as he thumped Juan Monaco 6-1, 6-2, 6-0 in a fourth-round match that finished at 1:13am in New York. It was 11:50pm by the time Federer and Monaco were eventually able to start their match, and it took Federer just 82 minutes to surge into the quarter-finals.

"It's happened often to me that I've had to wait a long time," said Federer. "I had to wait maybe two hours more than usual. It is quite crazy how our schedules change all the time as tennis players and it makes it extremely difficult to be on your A-game every single day.

"I'm extremely pleased with my reaction out there. I played really well and I felt fantastic. From the baseline I had the upperhand the whole time. In the three main areas of the game I was superior, and that made the outcome pretty straightforward."

Signalling his intent from the first ball, Federer needed just 12 minutes to race to a 5-0 lead. Six minutes later he had wrapped up the first set, having won 26 of the 35 points, including hitting 10 winners.

Monaco had no chance to settle as Federer broke immediately in the second set when the Argentine hit a forehand wide. The Swiss then broke again in the seventh game before serving out the set having hit a further 19 winners.

Federer saved some of his best tennis till last, drawing gasps from the Arthur Ashe crowd with an awesome display of power and accuracy from the baseline that utterly smothered any attacks from Monaco. Indeed, the Tandil native managed just four winners in the entire match before Federer wrapped up his 60th career win at Flushing Meadows (60-6 record). In comparison, Federer hit 42 winners.

The 30-year-old Federer will look to take that standard of play into his quarter-final clash, which sees him once again come up against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Federer lost to the Frenchman in the Wimbledon quarter-finals two months ago, and again in the third round of Montreal.

"I'm just excited to play against him, to be honest," said Federer. "He's a nice player to watch and so to play against him is very interesting. I thought we had a great match at Wimbledon, which unfortunately I ended up losing. He came back and proved it in Montreal how good he's playing right now. He's definitely on a good streak, so I hope I can stop him this time."

Sixteen-time major champion Federer is bidding to become the first man in the Open Era to win six titles at the US Open, having triumphed from 2004-2008; he also finished runner-up to Juan Martin del Potro in the 2009 final. He is yet to win a Grand Slam title in 2011 and will look to rectify that in New York to extend his record of winning at least one major trophy every year since 2003.

Date: 06.09.2011, Source: ATP