Roger Federer won 32 sets in Wimbledon en suite. In his eighth-final win over Adrian Mannarino, the series was virtually untouched.
By Jörg Allmeroth from London
When Roger Federer and Adrian Mannarino played the first 16 minutes of this round of 16, you could think Federer had any other appointments or obligations on this Manic Monday. In those 16 minutes Federer had indeed already won the first set, with 11-0 wins and 25-5 points. It was a brutal declassification, a humiliation, a performance from which some opponents certainly would not have recovered.
But one-way tennis turned into a game, an entertaining match even for Centre Court visitors: Federer had to release energy, switch to fighter mode and overcome some tricky situations before his 6-0, 7-5, 6-4 victory over the Frenchman was certain.
“It was an interesting game. It was important to stay focused when things got tight,” said the eight-time champion, who continues to march through the qualifiers on Church Road without losing a set and reaches his favourite major in the quarter-finals for the 16th time. Currently he has won 32 sets in a row and is about to beat his record series from the Wimbledon years 2005 and 2006 – at that time he remained unbeaten by 34 sets. Federer’s next opponent is determined in the game between South African violent defender Kevin Anderson and French entertainment artist Gael Monfils.
Federer used up as little substance until the quarter-finals as hardly ever before at one of the Grand Slam festivals. He himself noted with satisfaction that he had only been on the Centre Court for six hours and eight minutes in the last four matches – all the more so as an unaccustomed heat wave in the first eight days was also a factor influencing the All England Club. Against Mannarino, Federer added 105 minutes of play time, but the 36-year-old defending champion was stressed only by rounds two and three. “That was the difficult game I had expected against Adrian,” Federer said. Last autumn, the 30-year-old Gaul even got him into serious trouble at his home tournament in Basel.
But in Wimbledon Federer is once again a different power than at virtually any other tournament in the world. And also and especially the player who strikes mercilessly in the important moments. Mannarino kept things largely open after the relegation at the beginning, but he had to accept breaks from Federer to 6-5 in the second and 5-4 in the third set. “I’m happy with the way things went,” Federer said afterwards, “it was good that I made really few easy mistakes.”
This also applied to the last service game, which Federer played confidently and did not lose any more points. Now he will prepare for the quarter-finals calmly and “with joy”, Federer said: “This is the moment when things really get going here. This is another tournament.”