Roger Federer, winner of five Australian Open titles, yesterday continued his march to another crown by defeating a familiar opponent and practice partner from Ukraine, Alexandr Dolgopolov, who is ranked 35 in the world.

The match, which lasted one hour, 33 minutes at the Rod Laver Arena, was their third career meeting with Federer victorious in all of them.

Federer broke his opponent’s serve once to take the first set 6/3 in 26 minutes, but the second set was a battle royale that lasted 45 minutes.

The Ukrainian served hard and the games went on with serve until the 11th game. Dolgopolov led 40-15 on his serve, but a cross-court forehand shot was called out and he promptly challenged it. At 40-30, there was a prolonged rally and Federer changed pace with a sliced crosscourt short to his opponent’s service box. Dolgopolov attempted to reply in kind but his shot landed slightly beyond the sideline and the game went to deuce. Federer got the crucial break point and held on to go up six games to five. Serving for the set, he conceded only one point to win 7/5.

Dolgopolov took the first game of the third set and Federer held. At one-all, Federer broke Dolgopolov’s serve in the third game and from that moment on, it was downhill for the Ukrainian, who did not win a single game in the set that lasted only 22 minutes and with score of 6-1.

The serve was a major weapon deployed by both players. In all, Federer delivered 25 aces to Dolgopolov’s three unreturned serves. However, the Ukrainian hit the fastest serve of the match at 213 km/ph. Federer’s success with the serve did not present his opponent any service breaks while he converted five of 13 break points.

His aggressive play was rewarded by his winning 75 per cent of points in his forays to the net. At the end, Federer had won a total of 100 points, while the tally for Dolgopolov was 69 points.

In another game of the day, world number one and top seeded Novak Djokovic faced a Wild Card entrant, Quentin Halys of France, ranked 187 in the world.

Suffering early match jitters, Halys lost the first two 6/1; 6/2. In the third set, however, he went all swinging. He held his serve in the first game. Then he hit blistering returns off Djokovic’s serve to break the world champion in the second game, thanks to a lucky net cord shot.

The crowd roared in characteristic support for the underdog. Halys held on to his serve for the remainder of the set; forcing a tiebreak, which Djokovic won seven points to three to take the third set and the match.A long-standing ovation by the crowd applauded the teenager’s gallantry.

In the women’s draw, Serena Williams had a breezy work-out in defeating Sue-wei Hsieh of Taipei (Taiwan) 6/1; 6/2, while Maria Sharapova also dismissed Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 6/2; 6/1.

Kei Nishikori of Japan defeated American Austin Krajicek 6/1; 6/2; 7/6, just as Frenchman, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, defeated Australian hope, 19-year old Omar Jasika 7/5; 6/1; 6/4.
However, Nick Kyrgios kept Australian flag aloft with his hard fought 6/4, 7/5, 7/6 victory over Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay.