Federer defeated Spain’s David Ferrer for the eleventh straight time, 6-1, 6-4. The Swiss winner of a men’s record 16 majors is trying to join Ivan Lendl and Pete Sampras as the only players to have won the year-end championships five times.
“It was a really tough match,” Federer, the top seed in Group B, said in a televised interview immediately after the match at The O2 arena in east London. “It’s not fair for David, one-and-half hours for that kind of scoreline shows how tough it was. I’m happy I was able to come through.”
Federer, who is playing in the year-end event for a ninth time, started broke the Spaniard’s serve in the second game of the first set. It took Ferrer almost twenty minutes to get on the scoreboard, breaking back in the fifth game. Watched by Diego Maradona, Argentina’s 1986 soccer World Cup-winning captain, Federer took the first set as Ferrer hit a backhand into the net. The Swiss righthander won the match with an ace.
Earlier in the day, Murray beat Robin Soderling of Sweden 6-2, 6-4 in the opening match of the event in front of a sell out crowd of 17,500. The Scot will play Federer in his next group match.
The tournament, won by Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko last year, has a round-robin format, with the season’s eight best players divided into two groups. Each will face the three others in the group, with the top two in each section moving into the knockout semifinals.
Federer Defeats Ferrer
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