World No.8 Roger Federer began preparation for the Wimbledon by defeating 27-year-old Belarusian Ilya Ivashka 7-6(4), 7-5 in the opening round of the Noventi Open in Halle yesterday.<\/p>\n
The fifth seed Swiss ace, playing his first grass-court match of the season, will now face the winner of the match between Canada’s world No. 21 Felix Auger-Aliassime and world No.17 from Poland Hubert Hurkacz.<\/p>\n
In another first-round match, world No. 94 Corentin Moutet of France won 1-6, 7-5 after Belgium’s world No.13 David Goffin retired.<\/p>\n
“[I] had a tough moment early on in the first set when he [Ivashka] had break points, so that was crucial to get out of those. And then I played a really good tie-break, which I was happy about. I think as the match went on, I started to create more opportunities and started to also calm my nerves a bit,” Federer said after the match.<\/p>\n
“I missed it. I hadn’t played a tournament in two years on this surface. I’ve done the hard courts, I’ve done the clay and now on the grass. It’s been great being back here in Halle. I love playing here,” said the winner of a record 20 Grand Slam titles.<\/p>\n
This is 39-year-old Federer’s fourth tournament of the season, following a quarter-final showing in Doha, a second-round loss in Geneva, and a run to the fourth round at the French Open, where he withdrew before playing Italy’s Matteo Berrettini.<\/p>\n
“I’m excited to be back on the green grass. And getting a win is obviously always very nice,” said the eight-time Wimbledon singles champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World No.8 Roger Federer began preparation for the Wimbledon by defeating 27-year-old Belarusian Ilya Ivashka 7-6(4), 7-5 in the opening round of the Noventi Open in Halle yesterday. The fifth seed Swiss ace, playing his first grass-court match of the season, will now face the winner of the match between Canada’s world No. 21 Felix […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8073,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions\/8073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}