Roger Federer heads into the Dubai Championships on Monday convinced that it\u2019s only a matter of time until he wins his record-setting 100th career title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 20-time Grand Slam champion, who has long used the emirate as a winter training base, will take to the court for the first time since his Australian Open fourth-round defeat by Stefanos Tsitsipas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Greek youngster is also in the Dubai field, buoyed by his Marseille title win on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 37-year-old Swiss, seeded second behind tournament debutant Kei Nishikori, explained on Sunday that he is perfectly content to let things take their natural course and is not stressing over finally cracking his trophy century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s got to be the mindset, that you try your best every match, every week anyway,\u201d said Federer, who reached 99 titles last October.\u201cThings fall into place or they don\u2019t. It\u2019s not because of lack of effort.\u201dThe tennis icon added: \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about 99 titles ever since Basel, every tournament I\u2019ve played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing new. Of course, coming to Dubai where I\u2019ve enjoyed a lot of success sort of makes you believe maybe it could happen here.\u201cThen again, the draw is tough. I haven\u2019t played in a few weeks so you reset everything, get ready for your first round, hope everything is going to click again here in Dubai.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Federer will be starting his quest for a record eighth Dubai title as he takes a 13-0 head-to-head record into his first-round contest on Monday against longtime friend Philipp Kohlschreiber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The German went down to Federer in the Rotterdam second round a year ago, with the Swiss winning the tournament and taking back the ATP number one ranking at the record age of 36.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI just practised with Kohlschreiber a couple (of) days ago, we played two sets basically,\u201d said Federer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe really both know what we\u2019re getting into. He looks good, so it\u2019s going to be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crowd at the Aviation Club will be delighted to see Federer return for the first time since 2017, when he lost in the second round to Evgeny Donskoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt gives me confidence that I know I can play well here in Dubai on this court in these conditions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger Federer heads into the Dubai Championships on Monday convinced that it\u2019s only a matter of time until he wins his record-setting 100th career title. The 20-time Grand Slam champion, who has long used the emirate as a winter training base, will take to the court for the first time since his Australian Open fourth-round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55811","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\/55811","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=55811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55813,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55811\/revisions\/55813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}