Philippoussis in Doubt for Miami After Injury at Challenger

Posted on March 21, 2005

Federer Punches Clock and Hewitt for Second Consecutive ATP Indian Wells Title

It's not often that the pre-match hype surrounding a match between the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the world centers around not who will win, but just how bad a blow-out it will be.

World No. 1 Roger Federer lived up to the hype, defeating Lleyton Hewitt 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 in a match that was never in doubt. It was the seventh consecutive win for the Swiss over the Aussie, with Hewitt's last win coming in Davis Cup play in 2003.

"I think Lleyton wasn't at his best today," said Federer, who broke Hewitt early in the first and third sets, and midway through the second. "I felt that very clearly, very quickly, as well. I was definitely using that to my advantage. So who knows, if Lleyton would have been better off today, it would have been a very different match, I think."

Hewitt lacked his usual fire throughout the match, near the end appearing resigned to the fact his baseline game with few net approaches was again unable to make a dent in the Swiss' arsenal. Hewitt came up limping a number of times in the third set, bothered by a toe he jammed earlier in the week.

"I have great respect for him, playing all the way through the match," Federer said. "I really had the feeling he was hurting, and he had to change up his game to actually have a slight chance today, and he did. That's a lot of credit to him. You know, he's a great, great fighter."

It was an Open Era-record 17th consecutive win in a final for Federer, who is now 42-1 since his loss at last year's Athens Olympics, winning his fourth title of 2005.

Hewitt, in no mood to reminisce with reporters about the entertaining 45-hit point during the match which ended with Federer lunging for a cross-court forehand near the net and the Aussie stabbing a volley winner, said the match was standard Federer fare.

"Yeah, he played well," Hewitt said. "That's sort of the standard that he's put himself week in and week out now. It's not like he's doing something freaky out of the blue. He really is playing like that pretty much every week now...He's purely just playing on confidence I think a lot at the moment, as well. He goes out there and he believes on the big points and the big shots are going to come off for him. The last year and a half, they have. He knows when to pull the trigger. He's sort of playing on auto-pilot a lot out there, I think. He just has a lot of self-belief in himself under the big situations right at the moment."

In the Saturday doubles final, top seeds Mark Knowles and Daniel Nestor edged Aussie No. 7 seeds Wayne Arthurs and Paul Hanley 7-6(6), 7-6(2) for their first title of the year.

In the Sunday women's doubles final, top seeds Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez won their second title of the year with a 7-6(3), 6-1 victory over No. 2 Nadia Petrova and Meghann Shaughnessy, successfully defending their IW title from 2004.

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TENNIS-X NEWS, NOTES, QUOTES AND BARBS
The 2005 NASDAQ-100 Open in Miami will feature 47 hours of live and taped U.S. television coverage for nine of the 12 days of the event on four networks: CBS, ESPN, ESPN2 and The Tennis Channel...Least-insightful question of the day for Roger Federer from ESPN commentator Cliff Drysdale: "Will the French be tougher for you than Wimbledon?"...Six-foot life-size cutouts of Miami defending champions Serena Williams and Andy Roddick, plus Wimbledon champions Maria Sharapova and Roger Federer are on display at almost 90 Starbucks locations from Miami to Jupiter, Florida...Roger Federer on Marat Safin being his main rival: "I don't quite agree it's only Marat, you know, he's got a chance just because he beat me last time. I have a great record against him, as well. Don't forget that, please (smiling)."...Lleyton Hewitt on the Roger Federer weakness: "His backhand's definitely weaker than his forehand. There's no doubt about that. It's a lot better backhand than most guys around, though. When you have to look at the whole picture of his whole game, his backhand is definitely weaker than his forehand. He's got a great slice backhand, as well. If there's one shot that's going to go off, nine times out of ten, it's going to be the backhand instead of the forehand."...Props to the geniuses at ESPN for running the score at the bottom of the screen during the tape-delayed showing of the Andy Roddick-Lleyton Hewitt IW semifinal, you guys rarely fail to disappoint...Main draw play begins Wednesday this week in Miami for both the men and women, and qualifying gets underway on Monday and ends Tuesday...The ATP's official magazine, DEUCE, goes on sale this week for the first time ever via subscription. The Spring 2005 issue, to be unveiled Tuesday night at the joint ATP-Sony Ericsson WTA Tour awards ceremony in Miami, features a cover story on Roger Federer by acclaimed author Mark Mathabane...Mark Philippoussis, who reached the Sunrise (Florida) Challenger doubles final with partner Jan-Mike Gambill, withdrew from the final Sunday with a muscle pull...Former French Open finalist Martin Verkerk will undergo another shoulder surgery later this month...Peter Lundgren, speaking to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on his coaching success with Marat Safin: "First of all, you have to get the respect from the player, and it took a while for us to get to know each other. But maybe that's my strength. I can feel his mood because I was a player myself...The whole thing is to not practice too much but to focus on what he should focus on." On what, hitting the buffet? Word is if Lundgren gets any bigger, friends and family are going to stage an intervention on the walking heart attack...Irakli "Freak Show" Labadze, speaking to the Sun-Sentinel's Charlie "Brick" Bricker on trying to purge a kidney stone: "It happened at Scottsdale. Very painful. I had to walk 300 meters to a hospital and they told me to sit over there and wait until my name was called. The pain was terrible. I told them, 'Just give me a knife. I'll cut it out myself.' And then I collapsed on the floor, barely conscious."