By Chris Oddo | Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Roger Federer opened his title defense at the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati with a straight-sets win over Roberto Bautista Agut
Photo Source: Maddie Meyer
It was same old, same old for Roger Federer at the Western and Southern Open on Tuesday night in Cincinnati. The six-time champion eased past Roberto Bautista Agut, 6-4, 6-4, to improve his career record over the Spaniard to 4-0 and push his lifetime record at Cincinnati to 38-8.
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After going 1-4 in his first four appearances at this Masters 1000 event, Federer has gone 37-4 with six titles, including last year’s crown. Inactive since the Wimbledon final, Federer says he's happy his inititial tour encounter went so easily.
“It's been a while since I've had a match,” Federer said. “I'm happy I got through this first one. Now I know what it's about. I have a day off tomorrow where I can think about how things went today, where I need to improve. There is always a few things. And then looking forward to see who I play on Thursday.”
Despite only making seven of 26 first serves in the opening set, Federer still did not face a break point. He broke in the fifth game of the opener for a 3-2 lead and cruised from there.
In the second set Federer claimed the break in the third game and dropped only three points on serve to finish proceedings in one hour and 10 minutes.
The victory is Federer’s 41st of the season against seven losses. his win sets up a third-round encounter with either Kevin Anderson or Jack Sock. If he can advance past that round Federer could face Rafael Nadal for the 34th time in the quarterfinals.
When asked about the possible reunion with his longtime rival in press, the Swiss acknowledged that it has been a while. “Sometimes they come in bunches and sometimes it doesn't happen for a while,” he said. “You don't know why. Clearly Rafa has also not played much last year. He was injured, he had the appendix, and then next thing you know I didn't have a good '13 so I wasn't getting very deep into tournaments then when he was playing great. We kind of missed each other because we were still highly ranked; we were far away in the draw.”
He added: “But of course it would be nice to play again. There is no doubt.”
In other action on the men’s side, Grigor Dimitrov eased past Vasek Pospisil in straight sets to reach the third round while Canada’s Milos Raonic was upset by Feliciano Lopez, 7-6(4), 6-4.
In his first match of the tournament, controversial star Nick Kyrgios went out meekly to Richard Gasquet losing 6-2, 6-1 in just 57 minutes.