ATP World Tour Finals 2019: Roger Federer Keeps Semifinals Hopes Alive After Defeating Matteo Berrettini

Roger Federer dispatches Matteo Berrettini 7-6(2), 6-3 to keep his hopes alive at the ATP World Tour Finals 2019 as he clinches his first round-robin victory at the year-end championship on Tuesday.

Set one

Roger Federer started with a quite straightforward service game. Matteo Berrettini did not stay back as he held his opening service game after an impressive start. The games then went with the serve till the 12th game as it was simply a case of who slips up on their serve first with both players dominating on their respective service games.

While serving to stay in the set at 5-6, Matteo Berrettini faced the first breakpoint of the match after being 0-30 down but the Italian saved it to force the set to go through the tiebreaker.

Roger Federer dominated the tiebreaker winning the tiebreaker 7-2 and claiming his first set at the ATP World Tour Finals 2019 with Berrettini’s health looking a bit gingerly towards the end of the set.

Clean strike from Federer!!

Set two

Roger Federer took his momentum to the next set as he broke Berrettini for the first time in the match in the first game of the second set. It all went wrong for Berrettini very quickly as he lost his sense of timing while hitting the ball in the first game before Federer wrapped up the break of serve.

Matteo Berrettini stepped up in the 8th game of the match when Federer was serving at 4-3 as he earned two breakpoints at 40-15. However, Federer nullified the chance to break with three first serves.

The 23-year-old got another opportunity to break but another first serve helped the Swiss maestro to save the third breakpoint. The 20-time Grand Slam champion then survived a tricky service game before closing the set after breaking Berrettini for the second time, winning the set 6-3.

Roger Federer will next face the defending runner-up Novak Djokovic in their last round-robin match at the 2019 Nitto ATP Finals.