Playing Roger Federer for the first time can be daunting, especially after Federer has taken off some six weeks to recover and to train.  Roger Federer found himself in the same scenario as last year, or possibly even worse.  Last year, Federer had won only one Slam and lost early at the French and Wimbledon.  He was losing ground to Rafael Nadal who had his best season ever.  He must have felt he needed a strong end of the year to give himself a good chance to regain number 1, and so he made a huge push at the end of the year.

He won Stockholm, Basel, and the World Tour Finals.  He reached the finals of Shanghai.  He reached the semis of Paris and match points.

In the World Tour Finals, he went undefeated which maxed out the points he could earn (You can max out at 1500 points by going undefeated, but do as poorly as 1100 points if you lose 2 of 3 round robin matches but still qualify and win the tournament).

Federer had expected to play Novak Djokovic so he knew he wanted his game to be very sharp to win Basel again.  Andy Murray threw a wrinkle into the tournament by taking a last minute wildcard.  It turned out not to matter as he withdrew before playing a match.

Playing unexpected finalist, Kei Nishikori, Federer pulled out all the stops.  He hit aggressively off the bat which always pressures someone that might be nervous.  Nishikori really didn’t help his cause by serving poorly, around 40% for the first serve and 46% overall.  This allowed Federer to be in nearly every game Nishikori played.  With this pressure, Nishikori hit the net quite often, and it started very much like the Djokovic match where Nishikori couldn’t get into the kind of rhythm he needs to play his game.

Federer sliced, drop shotted, and hit power backhands down-the-line, something he doesn’t do a lot, but a desperately needed component to his game.  Federer won the first set, 6-1.

The second set was a little better for Nishikori as he held serve a few times, but again, Federer kept pressuring him on games, and got a break.  Meanwhile Federer only faced one break point all day and didn’t get broken.  These are the kinds of stats that Federer loves because no matter how poorly he’s playing, if he holds serve, he has chances to win.

Federer rode the one break to a 6-3 second set win.

Final score: 6-1, 6-3.

Federer closes the gap between him and Murray in the year-end championship to 1500 points, which is still considerable.  There are 2500 points between Paris and the year-end championship and this assumes Murray doesn’t add to his total which he is likely to do.  One positive is Nadal withdrawing from Paris and the likelihood that Djokovic will do the same leaving only one top 4 player (Andy Murray) to join Federer.

Kei Nishikori would have had to qualify for Paris next week (the qualifying starts this weekend) because the entrants into the main draw are selected over a month prior to the tournament, so much before Nishikori’s successful Asian swing:semifinalist at Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai), but due to reaching the finals, he has been given a special exemption into the main draw.

Nishikori, should he win his initial round, would play Troicki in the second round and may play Djokovic, if he doesn’t withdraw.  If he does, then he may make a reasonable run in Paris if he’s not too fatigued.

In Valencia, surprise finalists, Juan Monaco and Marcel Granollers, have split sets.