Basel
\nRoger Federer had to fight hard to hold off Serbia\u2019s Filip Krajinovic on Tuesday, edging to a 6-2 4-6 6-4 win to reach the second round of the Swiss Indoors.<\/p>\n
The eight-time champion flirted with his earliest exit in Basel since his 1998 debut as a teenager, but came out on top in a nervy deciding set.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was up 6-2, 3-1, it could have ended very quickly,\u201d Federer said. \u201cBut I made life more difficult. I didn\u2019t have the best serving stats, maybe that caught up to me. But these are different balls, more altitude than in Shanghai, it\u2019s about getting used to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd first rounds are always tricky, it\u2019s never a given that you are going to win.\u201d Earlier, Jan-Lennard Struff ended the possibility of a rematch between Federer and his US Open conqueror John Millman by beating the Australian 7-6 (7\/3), 6-2.<\/p>\n
Krajinovic appeared to be on the way to a straight-sets loss in his first meeting with the 20-time Grand Slam winner before the momentum began to turn.<\/p>\n
Up a set and a break, the Swiss lost serve in the sixth game of the second set before his opponent managed to square the match with a break in game 10.<\/p>\n
The top seed went up an early break in the third and broke Krajinovic in an 11-minute game for a 5-2 lead, only to fail to serve out the match at the first time of asking.<\/p>\n
But he clinched victory on his second match point to take his career record at the tournament to 67-9 as he bids to reach a 12th successive final at St. Jakobshalle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad I got through. These are the matches you have to win,\u201d said Federer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings didn\u2019t really flow, but it was a hard-fought win. I feel good physically. I have a day off tomorrow so it was no trouble to play three sets. I\u2019m happy where I am right now.\u201d The 37-year-old Federer, who revealed earlier this week that he had been struggling with a hand injury since the grass-court season, last lost at the Swiss Indoors in 2013, going down to Juan Martin del Potro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Basel Roger Federer had to fight hard to hold off Serbia\u2019s Filip Krajinovic on Tuesday, edging to a 6-2 4-6 6-4 win to reach the second round of the Swiss Indoors. The eight-time champion flirted with his earliest exit in Basel since his 1998 debut as a teenager, but came out on top in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45256,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45254\/revisions\/45256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}