Amazingly, Djokovic has never won in Cincinnati but after his defeat in the Montreal final last week, most thought he would make a statement before the U.S. Open started.
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Roger Federer defeated top-ranked Novak Djokovic in the finals of the Cincinnati Masters to reclaim the No. 2 tennis ranking with old-style attacking play.
With a win he’d become the first player to triumph in all nine of the ATP’s elite Masters 1000 events – a feat that Federer said would be “quite unbelievable”.
It was Federer’s first tournament since he lost to Djokovic in the finals at Wimbledon. It was Djokovic’s second finals loss in as many tournaments and turns next week’s Grand Slam in New York from a Djokovic coronation into a free-for-all between the top three players in the world, and anyone else who unexpectedly joins the party, such as Marin Cilic previous year . And sure enough, Federer fell to No. 3 after Andy Murray’s victory in Montreal, and when Murray made the semifinals at Cincinnati, the only way for Federer to get the No. 2 ranking back was to win the tournament.
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Djokovic, who converted all four of his break points against Stan Wawrinka in the quarterfinals, earned his best second-set threat at 30-all in the fifth game.
Hitting 32 winners and firing seven aces, Roger Federer was kept his rival under tremendous pressure. “I’m doing different things now on the backhand”.
“This year I got to the final, it’s a step closer”, he said. It’s ironically the same argument that Nadal supporters were recently able to hold against Djokovic while the Serbian often cleaned up on best-of-three matches against the Spaniard. Federer is in-form, and something about Cincinnati just clicks with him, he’s won it six times. There aren’t many errors coming out of his forehand wing now.
The image of Cinderella Man, or the fairtytale Cinderalla story, has stood the test of time as much as Federer, who will return to Braddock’s backyard of New York aiming to inflict the type of feel-good factor upon the general sporting public that Jimmy managed back in the 30s.
He faced only three break points all week, none on Sunday when he lost only 13 points during his 11 service games and the tiebreaker.
Defending champion Serena Williams finished her last U.S. Open tune-up in style by beating Romanian third seed Simona Halep 6-3 7-6(5) to win the women’s final.
“I guess I have to attend for Roger to retire”, Djokovic joked in the course of the trophy presentation ceremony, referring to his failure to win the occasion.
“This was my best performance since (winning) Wimbledon”.
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Cricket: Australia quickly picked up the last two England wickets to secure a consolation victory in the final Ashes test at The Oval by an innings and 46 runs yesterday.
