Federer powers past Struff into Basel QF

Roger Federer won his 17th consecutive match at the Swiss Indoors yesterday, dispatching Jan-Lennard Struff 6-3, 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals. The top seed, unbeaten in Basel since 2013, is an eighttime winner of his home event and will next play against either Frenchman Gilles Simon or Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis.

The 37-year-old Federer, ranked third in the world, trailed to an early break but soon recovered for 3-all in the opening set. He then broke for 5-3 before closing out the opener in 27 minutes. The second set stayed on serve until a fifth double-fault from Struff, which opened the door for Federer to move 6-5 ahead.

Moments later, the 20-time Grand Slam champion served out a 41st victory of the season with a volley into the empty court on his first match point. Fourth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas dominated Peter Gojowczyk 6-3, 6-1 to line up a quarter-final with one of his toughest NextGen rivals. The Greek will face Russian Daniil Medvedev, who defeated Italy’s Andreas Seppi 7-6 (7/5), 6-2 in their second-round encounter.

Medvedev owns three titles this season from Sydney, Winston-Salem and last month in Tokyo. He has also defeated last week’s Stockholm champion Tsitsipas in two meetings this season, in Miami and the US Open. Tsitsipas made his trophy breakthrough at the weekend in Sweden with his first career title.