Agencies
Rome, May 11: Roger Federer joined Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray in the third round of the Rome Masters here Wednesday with the Swiss admitting that he was fully expecting to lose against Alexander Zverev.
“I’m cautious but extremely happy – I was expecting to lose in straight sets today (Wednesday),” admitted the 17-time Grand Slam champion, who withdrew last week from Madrid with back pain. But the Swiss showed no signs of it as he eased past Zverev 6-3, 7-5. The 89-minute match was the first for the 34-year-old Swiss since losing a Monte Carlo quarterfinal to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga nearly a month ago. Federer will now face 13th seed Dominic Thiem, a 6-3, 6-2 winner over Joao Sousa.
Top seed Djokovic and No.2 Murray produced no-drama victories, with the Serb beating Stephane Robert 7-5, 7-5 while Murray put out Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin 6-3, 6-3.
However, Djokovic had to raise his game by a couple of notches as Robert showed that he was prepared for a fight by trying to chase down every ball. In both sets the Frenchman wriggled out from dangerous situations with some audacious hitting.
In the first set, Djokovic broke for a 4-2 lead, but Robert immediately broke back. However, in the 12th game of the set, he missed an easy drop shot to hand another breakpoint to Djokovic and the serb took full advantage of it. The second set also followed the same pattern as that of the first.