Roger Federer has reached the semi-finals of the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Shanghai and is still on course to defend his title. The top seed beat Kei Nishikori 6:4 and 7:6 (4).
In contrast to his last sixteen duel against Roberto Bautista Agut, Federer got off to a good start and promptly earned five break points. However, Nishikori found time to play and fended them off with an aggressive game. The defending champion did not miss his sixth chance and was actively supported by the net edge.
With the 1-0 lead in his back, the two-time Shanghai winner played free and showed himself to be better on serve. Nishikori, semi-finalist at the US Open, tried to use his strong physique to counter Federer’s attacks at times with bravura.
But the pressure of the top seed was too high: Federer acted with a lot of speed and brilliant precision and snatched another break to 4:1. A loud “Kumm’ jetzat!” and two service games later won Federer secured the first round with 6:4.
The darling of the audience “Roger” knew how to convince also at the beginning of the second run and put his class into excellent returns. The reward for this was another early break to 1-0 and the “Maestro” marched clearly towards the semifinals.
The key to the success was clearly the strong one-handed backhand of the Swiss. With the forehand Federer acted strong as usual, but also the backhand generated some winners and was hardly to be broken through.
The Swiss could maintain the enormously high playing level, played partly perfect tennis and had to tremble only briefly with a Re-Break of Nishikori. Nishikori played well, focused and often had good ideas, which Federer recognized early and destroyed. Federer followed up and struck at the right time in the tiebreak of the second set.
After 1:53 playing time, the Swiss converted his first match point to 6:4 and 7:6 (4).
In the semi-finals, Federer will face Borna Coric, who beat surprise quarter-finalists Matthew Ebden from Australia in two sets 7-5 and 6-4.
Federer hadn’t made good experiences with the young Croatian recently: At the beginning of the grass court season, “FedEx” had to give in to its younger opponent in the hall final and thus missed the title defence at the Wimbledon preparation tournament.
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