Sam Groth put one awesome 142mph serve on Roger Federer – which he returned with interest – and that pretty much told the story of the Australian’s doomed project and the Swiss’s smooth progress into the third round of the 2014 US Open.
Federer, who is in as rich a vein of form as he has experienced for at least two years, survived a brief wobble near the end of their 108-minute match in the Arthur Ashe stadium on a cool Friday night to win 6-4 6-4 6-4. The symmetry was as pleasing as his 36 winners and nine aces, two of which arrived in his closing service game.
He will hope to improve on his numbers over the next week in pursuit of his sixth US title and 18th slam, an achievement that would reaffirm the dominance he and his peers once took for granted.
His next assignment is against Marcels Granollers, who took the tournament’s other giant server, Ivo Karlovic, out of the equation, coming through three tie-breaks to win an engrossing five-setter in nine minutes shy of four hours, not the ideal preparation for a match against a lingering genius with plenty of miles left in his 33-year-old legs.
When Groth broke to go 4-2 up in the third, his heart lifted, his eyes brightened and his racquet got just a little nervous. Within moments, he had surrendered the advantage as Federer found the gears to get back on serve.
Federer does not have those palpitations. His response was icy, ruthless and predictable.
The Swiss stepped up with familiar calm to serve for the match. His eighth ace took him to within a couple of points of the next round, and his ninth sealed it.
So, having been tantalisingly close to some kind of fame, Groth slipped back into relative anonymity, as the master of the age imposed his will on him to round it out, as we knew he would, with unruffled competence that occasionally touched brilliance. It is how you could describe so many of Federer’s matches in the first week of the 60 consecutive grand slam tournaments he has contested.
“I did really well from the start,” he said. “I was happy with the way I handled his serve. I knew he was going to come in, and I knew there would be opportunities when he came in.”
He reckoned the miracle return on Groth’s 142mph serve he might have done once before, perhaps against Andy Roddick, but such one-shot weaponry by Groth was never going to be enough to beat Federer even in third gear. He tried to mix it up, as well, but invariably ended on the wrong end of the exchanges, as Federer won 104 points to 84.
It was not perfect, nor did the performance indicate any weaknesses in Federer’s game that players at this level can exploit. That will not be the case from this point onwards. Now they are watching him like a hawk, ready to exploit any signs that the years have wearied him.
Federer, however, should complete a hat-trick of wins against Granollers when they meet on Monday and thereafter he will steel himself for a probable quarter-final against his junior doppleganger, Grigor Dimitrov, who first must get past David Goffin, who briefly tormented Federer at the French a couple of years ago.
“Granollers deserves to be there and I hope to be in shape for him in a couple of days,” Federer said.
However you compute it, Federer is in a good place. He has expended just enough energy to reach the first weekend and, if he has calculated his run as well as he normally does, he will have plenty in the tank for Granollers.
“You look at this guy at 33 and you think his days are numbered,” John McEnroe said, “then you think, wait a second, maybe his days aren’t numbered.”
Federer rarely loses under the lights in New York and this win took his score to 26-1. The numbers right now are in Federer’s favour.
Federer later reckoned his change of racquet has transformed his game, giving him “more easy power”. He told ESPN: “I think I made the right decision nine months ago, when things weren’t really going great. I’m not very stubborn. I’m open to change.”
He said he was “definitely playing with more confidence” than at Wimbledon, where he made the final. “If I’m moving well, I know good things can happen.”
That is a quietly scary message of intent to a field that has yet to settle down after five days.
