Federer Punches Clock and Hewitt for Another 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.