Thiem is ticking for Federer
Print Edition
ROGER Federer said ‘time was ticking’ in his battle to recover form and fitness for the French Open after losing to rising Austrian Dominic Thiem 6-7 (2), 4-6 in the third round of the Italian Open in Rome yesterday.
The former world No. 1 still looks way short of his best after knee and back injuries and struggled to get to grips with the 22-year-old Thiem at the Foro Italico, a week after withdrawing from the Madrid Masters.
Thiem, ranked 15th, recovered from an early break and streaked into a 6-2 lead in the tiebreak before taking the opening set with a backhand winner. He broke 34-year-old Federer’s serve again midway through the second set as he claimed the 32nd victory of a breakthrough season that has seen him rise to a career-high 13th.
Seventeen-time major champion Federer, who has missed 10 weeks of the season through knee surgery, shrugged off the defeat, saying his immediate priority was the French Open that begins on May 22.
“This is like, ‘who cares about the results here?’. It matters what comes now in the next couple of months,” Federer told a news conference.
Still confident
“Now obviously time starts ticking more towards Paris. Clearly the way I’m playing right now is never going to be enough for a good run in Paris... I’m still confident I will be fine somehow.”
Federer, a four-time finalist in Rome, missed last week’s Madrid Masters with a back problem but said there had been some encouraging signs this week.
“For the first time maybe I could play a match really playing freely, trying out a few things,” he added.
In the women’s tournament, top-ranked Serena Williams came back from 3-5 down in the opening set and saved a set point in the tiebreak of a 7-6 (7), 6-1 win over American qualifier Christina McHale.
Williams’ quarterfinal opponent will be ninth-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova, who beat Daria Gavrilova 6-2, 2-6, 6-3.
Also, 11th-seeded Timea Bacsinszky beat eighth-seeded Carla Suarez-Navarro 5-7, 7-5, 6-2, and Irina-Camelia Begu defeated Daria Kasatkina 6-1, 6-4.
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