Thursday, July 18, 2013

Roger Federer to face Florian Mayer in Hamburg Quarter Finals

Top seed Roger Federer will face German Florian Mayer in his eighth tour-level quarter-final of the season. The Swiss reached the last eight at the bet-at-home Open - German Tennis Championships on Thursday in Hamburg as he defeated Jan Hajek 6-4, 6-3.

Federer squandered 10 of his 13 break points, including five match points in the eighth game of the second set, but prevailed in 72 minutes.

"I’m just still looking for the timing and the rhythm here, but the longer I stay in the tournament, the more confident I am that I’m going to play better and better as the tournament goes on," he said.

In his first tournament since a shock second-round exit at Wimbledon, the Swiss is playing with a new racquet, with a larger 98 square-inch frame, and is bidding to win his second ATP World Tour title of the season.

"I guess it’s to a degree some more getting use to, just to see how it reacts on every single shot," he said of his new racquet. "Clearly it reacts better to some shots. But it's important not to think of it the whole time, not to talk about it all the time, but more just sort of go with it, fight for every point, have the right mindset, be optimistic about playing here now and wanting to achieve a good result and that’s what I'm doing."

The 31-year-old Federer has a 31-4 event record in Hamburg, where he is playing for the first time since 2008. He won the title in 2002, 2004-05 and 2007 and finished runner-up in 2008 (l. to Nadal).

Mayer will be looking to oust a seeded player for a third straight match when he plays Federer, whom he trails 0-4 in the FedEx ATP Head2Head. The 45th-ranked German followed up his win over No. 7 Alexandr Dolgopolov by defeating No. 11 seed Feliciano Lopez 7-6(1), 6-2.

The 29 year old advances to his third quarter-final of the year on home soil, and also to the Hamburg quarter-finals for a fourth straight year. Mayer is two match wins shy of 200 career singles wins.

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