Roger Federer survives scare to advance

World No 8 to meet Rosol in the quarter-finals

Roger Federer survived a real scare in this round-of-16 encounter with Radek Stepanek at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships to progress to the quarter-finals on Wednesday evening.

The 32-year-old Swiss merely looked to be taking another step towards a prospective semi-final with world number two Novak Djokovic as he confidently claimed the first set 6-2.

However, his Czech opponent edged the second on a tie-break 7-4 and led 2-0 in the third and final set before Federer pegged him back and reeled off six of the next seven games for a 6-2, 6-7 (7-4), 6-3 win. The world number eight will now meet Stepanek’s compatriot Lukas Rosol in the quarter-finals.

“In a match, sometimes you start to play the right way and sometimes you start to play the wrong way, albeit not necessarily badly,” Federer said. “That’s what I realised as I was down a break and, as I was playing, I was trying to analyse everything – what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. I was playing shots as well at the same time as there’s a lot of thinking going on out there and it’s not very helpful. “But, I do think I started to understand what I was doing wrong, which made me: maybe play a little bit tentatively from the baseline.”