Roger Federer beats Karen Khachanov to reach his 11th Halle Open final

Roger Federer reached his 11th final at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle with a 6-4, 7-6(5) win over Karen Khachanov in their semi-final on Saturday.

It was a tough win for the eight-time former champion, who first served for the match at 5-4 in the second set after having broken the Russian, who was playing in his first-ever semi-final on a grass-court tournament.

In the ensuing tie-break, Federer got the mini-break at 1-0, but couldn’t hold on to his lead for much longer. However, the Swiss did well to secure his first match point to lead 6-5 in the tie-break, before eventually getting through the day after the Russian mistimed one of his booming shots for an unforced error.

Earlier in the first set, both players traded breaks in the first three service games before the 18-time Grand Slam champion took a 3-1 lead in the match. The one-break advantage proved decisive for Federer as he served out the set in the 10th game of the set.

Both players converted around 70% of their first serve points, but were shaky to win points off their second serves. There again, while Federer managed a passable winning conversion of 58% points off his second serves, Khachanov could only manage to win around 46% points off his second serves, which in the end tilted the game in favour of Federer.

‘Sometimes, it wasn’t pretty’

Analysing the nature of his win in his post-match press conference, Federer mentioned, “Anything is good as long as I win today and get a chance to be in the finals because you don’t want to lose in the semis and have sort of a great run and then not get a chance at the title. So, I feel like I did what I had to do. I got through somehow. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty but sometimes I just had to, you know, hang in there and defend and that’s okay too, because he was taking big cuts of the ball.”

Federer also noted, “Now, I’m very happy that it went as well as it did, you know, just reflecting back before in the locker room, it was nice thinking that in my second tournament back, after having not played so much, to be through again in the finals here in Halle, one of my favourite tournaments. It’s a great feeling. So, I’m excited for Sunday.”

Incidentally, his win on Saturday also coincided with his first-round upset to Mario Ancic at Wimbledon, back in 2002 before he embarked on his magnificent record-equalling run at the Championships.

When asked to give a perspective of the evolution of his career across these years, Federer reflected that his tennis career had revolved around dealing with the pressure that came along with the successes he has had achieved in all these years.

‘It doesn’t get any easier to learn later’

“For me, it was just important to really understand what I was actually trying to do on the tennis court or especially in practice,” stated Federer. “I wouldn’t understand why I would go to the weight room. So, I would ask a lot of questions trying to get answers and that just too me some time to understand it. And then, eventually, you have to try to understand what’s your best surface, where do you play better, where do you play worse, what are you going to do about it or how to try to avoid it.”

He then continued, “Same with your game, you know, all these little questions need answers. So, until you get those you just need a few years on Tour. But in the process, you can really enjoy it. You can go out there, you have nothing to lose, even though there is people saying you’re going to be the next great player since whatever and it creates a tremendous amount of pressure but it’s a privilege in my opinion to be in that position. So, you just got to try to make the most of it and learn very quickly because it doesn’t get any easier to learn later. So, you have to suck [soak] it up as much as you can early.”

Lastly, Federer also attributed the evolution of his career to having his own grouping of players in his own age-group.

“I had a great group of guys like the Next Gen group has, I used to have [Lleyton] Hewitt and [Marat] Safin and [Andy] Roddick and [Juan Carlos] Ferrero and all these guys and a lot of my guys, who came from my age group, my generation form the juniors came through as well,” Federer observed. “So, it was like this big new wave coming in. So, that was a lot of fun, trying to do that at the same time and trying to beat the other guy and be happy for him at the same time if he did well. So, I enjoyed my early days in my career as well even though it was all new.”