By Richard Pagliaro | Monday, February 27, 2017
In his first match since winning the Australian Open, Roger Federer dismissed Benoit Paire, 6-1, 6-3, in 54 minutes to reach the Dubai second round.
Photo credit: Mark Peterson/Corleve
Downtime is not rest time for Roger Federer, who celebrated his Australian Open triumph scaling the Swiss Alps armed with the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup.
In his highly-anticipated desert return, Federer played with the self-assured speed of a man sprinting downhill.
A focused Federer dismissed a dour and self-destructive Benoit Paire, 6-1, 6-3, flying through his Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships return in impressive fashion.
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A month after Federer fought back from a 1-3 fifth-set deficit to defeat rival Rafael Nadal and capture his record-extending 18th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, he hit the ground running in his return.
The 35-year-old Swiss moved fluidly and struck forcefully scoring his 11th consecutive Dubai victory. Federer won 20 of 28 points played on Paire’s second serve, stupefied the Frenchman with his SABR return and broke serve four times breezing through a commanding 54-minute victory over a desultory opponent.
The seven-time Dubai champion will face the winner of the all-Russian first-rounder between 83rd-ranked veteran Mikhail Youzhny and qualifier Evgeny Donskoy.
Dubai fans were so excited to see Federer, he received applause changing sides after holding to open the match.
The seven-time Dubai champion wasted little time making a forward charge. Federer deployed a slick SABR return and followed with a crisp backhand return breaking at love for 3-1 that ignited a five-game surge.
Exploiting the quicker court conditions, Federer actively sought to step inside the baseline, take the ball on the rise and reduce Paire’s reaction time.
Missing a pair of forehands, the Swiss faced double break point. Federer denied both and saved a third with an exquisite short-angled forehand volley, eventually consolidating.
The bearded Frenchman can move with a casual ease, but looked stilted by the fifth game. Paire called for the trainer, confided he’d strained his right ankle in the opening game and took a medical time-out to have his ankle taped.
The world No. 39 resumed play, but looked distracted and played disconnected points. Paire skipped a forehand off the tape that sailed long as Federer earned the double break for 5-1.
An ace down the middle followed by a return error gave the third seed double set point. When Paire put a return into net, Federer had his fifth straight game snatching a one-set lead after 27 minutes.
The match began as a bit of a fact-finding mission for Federer, who conceded he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from himself.
“Even though I did win in Australia, I still feel like I’m a work in progress,” Federer told ATP World Tour.com before his opener. “I feel there is a little of the unknown, I don’t know what to expect myself.
“Especially if I were to win matches here, how is my body and mind going to react to back-to-back matches? I haven’t done that in seven or eight months. I will try to take it easy and not put too much pressure on myself.”
Instead, he spent the evening pressuring Paire, who responded to the stress with erratic shots and moments of mayhem.
Even when completely healthy, Paire can be a confounding character on court capable of cracking backhands and dazzling finesse only to fall victim to some mind-numbing shot selection.
In the face of Federer’s relentless aggression and rapid-fire service holds, Paire couldn’t find his footing. A double fault and a slap shot into net saw him donate the break and a 3-2 lead to his opponent.
A petulant Paire hurled his racquet in disgust drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct call from chair umpire Ali Nili and jeers and whistles from the crowd as Federer backed up the break.
Had Paire invested as much energy into playing points as he did pounding on his Babolat racquet, perhaps he could have pushed the match to more than an hour, but Federer continued to carve him up from all areas of the court.
Paire pushed a volley into net to go down triple match point and capped a frustrating evening netting a feeble drop shot attempt.
The post-match handshake was one of the few signs of positivity from Paire. Federer needed less than an hour to outclass Paire for the fourth time in as many meetings and raise his Dubai record to 48-5.
Two years after his last Dubai title, Federer launched his quest for a record-extending eighth championship in the desert and looked thoroughly pleased to be back.
In a battle of veterans, Philipp Kohlschreiber conquered Gilles Muller, 6-4, 7-6 (1) in 88 minutes. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez dispatched Viktor Troicki, and could face Andy Murray in round two if the world No. 1 beats Malek Jaziri in his opener tomorrow. Marcel Granollers was a 6-3, 6-2 victor over Jiri Vesely. Granollers could meet Stan Wawrinka in the second round if the second-seeded Swiss defeats Damir Dzumhur in his opener.