{"id":360519,"date":"2017-07-11T00:53:53","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T16:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/federer-eases-into-quarters-with-dimitrov-demolition\/"},"modified":"2017-07-11T00:53:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T16:53:53","slug":"federer-eases-into-quarters-with-dimitrov-demolition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/federer-eases-into-quarters-with-dimitrov-demolition\/","title":{"rendered":"Federer eases into quarters with Dimitrov demolition"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The Bulgarian 13th seed, nicknamed “Baby Fed” when he was a junior on the basis of a single-handed backhand as silkily smooth as the Swiss master’s, looked sharp in the early exchanges.<\/p>\n

It was close to mirror-image tennis as the two men exchanged searing groundstrokes, gliding to the Centre Court net when they saw an opening to dispatch clinical volleys.<\/p>\n

But the difference between the greatest ever player on grass and the man who has struggled for years to emerge from his shadow told on the big points.<\/p>\n

Third seed Federer, who missed the clay court season to better prepare for his favourite tournament, took a decisive lead in the ninth game, converting his third break point. The Swiss then served out the first set to love.<\/p>\n

“He gave me some opportunities and I was happy to take advantage of them. I felt it was a terrific match for me, I didn’t expect it to go that easy,” Federer told the BBC.<\/p>\n

“It is still very special for me [Wimbledon], I feel privileged to play Centre Court still when they could have put Rafa, Novak or a women’s match on.<\/p>\n

“I hope I paid them back by playing an exciting match.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bulgarian 13th seed, nicknamed “Baby Fed” when he was a junior on the basis of a single-handed backhand as silkily smooth as the Swiss master’s, looked sharp in the early exchanges. It was close to mirror-image tennis as the two men exchanged searing groundstrokes, gliding to the Centre Court net when they saw an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":360520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[71,59,70],"class_list":["post-360519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-eurosport","tag-media","tag-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}