Match Preview: Federer v Gonzalez
Posted by Sally on June 3, 2008
Roger Federer will square off against Chilean Fernando Gonzalez for the twelfth time tomorrow, and the statistics don’t make good reading for Gonzalez. He might have turned his season around with a return to form in Paris, but his chances of extending the run don’t look high unless the world number one has a dip in form.
Federer leads their head-to-head series 10-1, with the sole win for Gonzalez coming in their last meeting in the round robin stages of the season-ending Masters Cup in Shanghai. He came from a set down to post a 3-6 7-6 (1) 7-5 win in 2007. Of their four meetings on clay, all but one (Monte Carlo in 2005) have resulted in straight sets wins for Federer.
Gonzalez already has one Swiss scalp after beating top ten player Stanislas Wawrinka in the fourth round, but unless something surprising happens tomorrow, few would bet against another routine win for Federer. Wawrinka has made real strides in the 2008 clay-court season, but Gonzalez will almost definitely find Federer to be a league above his previous opponents.
