Roger Federer Eases Into Second Round

4 months ago 23rd Jun 10:24

Roger Federer began his quest to reclaim his Wimbledon title yesterday in fine fashion with a straight set victory over Yen-Hsun Lu 7-5 6-3 6-2.

Federer had the honour of opening play on the newly roofed Centre Court in the absence of 2008 champion Rafael Nadal, who pulled out because of injury.

Despite coming to Wimbledon off the back of his historic French Open win it was an edgy and nervy start for the world number two as he missed a string of break point chances.

But the player from Chinese Taipei didn't seem phased by his opposition as he matched Federer shot for shot as he broke the former champion.

But Federer fought back to take the first set 7-5 and from then on it was plain sailing for the tournament favourite as he took a 2-0 lead in the second set.

As Lu's confidence ebbed away Federer played some beautiful tennis showed that missing the warm-up tournament in Halle has done nothing to damage his preparation to once again lift the title at SW19.

He wrappred up the match in just under two hours.

But a nice warm up match in the first round is not what greeted the fourth seed Novak Djokovic as he came up against French man Julien Bennteau.

Djokovic looked out of sorts at the beginning of the match as eight one seed Bennteau capitalised taking the first set.

Djokovic, who had a poor French Open, seemed to finally settled into the match but couldn't shake Benntuau, who well and truly had the support of the crowd, as the second set went to the tie-break.

But the world number four showed his experience as he dominated to level the match at one set a piece.

It seemed he was finally up and running as he dominated the third taking it 6-2. But the frenchman battled in the fourth as it went with serve and it looked like it possibly could go the whole way.

But a fall from Benntuau led to a lengthy injury break before Dkokovic sealed an unconvincing victory 6-7 (8-10) 7-6 (7-1) 6-2 6-4. .

The big loss of the day came in the form of Queen's finalist James Blake as he crashed out to Andreas Seppi 7-5 6-4 7-6 (7-5).

While Jo-Wilfred Tsonga found his match more testing than expected as Andrey Golubev took the ninth seed to four sets before the frenchman came through 6-3 5-7 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (7-5).

Robin Soderling sent out a message that he could repeat his French Open run to the final with a four set win over Gilles Muller 6-7 (4-7) 7-5 6-1 6-2.

There were also wins for Ivo Karlovic, Marin Cilic and Rainer Schuettler while Feliciano Lopez crashed out.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw