Federer shows he's still a force in Cincy

MASON, Ohio

Mardy Fish played one of the finest matches of his career in the final of the ATP Masters Series 1000 event at Cincinnati but it still didn’t bring him victory because he was playing Roger Federer. You know, the Federer who is not supposed to be as good anymore; the Federer who is in decline.

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If you want to be pedantic, you could hold Federer to the heights that he, himself, has set and make an argument for him not being as good as he was. But 99.9 percent of the players on the ATP Tour would grab Federer’s record this year and run with it. Federer has won a Grand Slam title and has a shot at another and he has just played in his third consecutive Masters 1000 final. Yes, he did lose the previous two — Rafael Nadal beating him on clay in Madrid and Andy Murray last week in Toronto — but he is back at No. 2 in the world and deserves to be.

“I think I can still make it back to No. 1,” Federer was saying this week, and although Nadal and Murray will both have a lot to say about that, there is no question that the goal is within the range of his supposedly declining powers.

Fish had played some superb tennis throughout the week and nothing changed in the final. The slim-line Floridian who shed 30 pounds at the end of last year when his ranking was No. 55, went into Cincinnati at No. 36 and will now move up to 21. The rise is all about his vastly improved movement, aided by words of wisdom from his South African coach, David Nainkin. And marriage to Stacey Gardner doesn’t seem to have done him any harm, either.

He served up a storm against Federer and was not broken until the penultimate game of the match when the Swiss had him on the run in a couple of rare but testing rallies and, on the first break point, forced him into netting a backhand. The courts at Paul Flory’s terrific tennis center have been as fast as any encountered on the tour this year, which contributed to the brevity of the rallies.

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Federer, in particular, showed an inclination to get into the net far more than he has done in the last year or two. The speed of the court was certainly a factor, but the arrival of Paul Annacone as his part-time coach cannot be ignored, either. Annacone, who has been working with the British LTA since Pete Sampras retired, was not actually with Federer in Cincinnati but he had been in Toronto and it is an absolute certainty that the American has been encouraging Roger to utilize his volleying skills. In his own playing days, Annacone regarded the court surface as almost immaterial because he never let the ball bounce. I watched him play Stefan Edberg in Los Angeles once and he chipped and charged every single first and second serve. I think Edberg won but that didn’t make Annacone change his game.

So Federer, whose forehand was back at its best, was looking far more aggressive than he has of late and, combined with his own smooth movement in the heat, was able hang tough until he got Fish into a second-set tie-breaker and then dominate it from start to finish.

Obviously Federer’s path to the final was smoothed by Dennis Istomin’s retirement midway through their second-round match and Philipp Kohlschreiber’s default, but Federer has felt at home in Cincinnati since he came to terms with the excessive heat early in his career and has now won the title four times — more than any other player.

The heat, coupled with the mild dose of mono that he has been suffering from, obviously contributed to Andy Roddick’s unhappy third-set collapse against Fish after he had served for the match at 6-4, 5-2, but hopefully the U.S. No. 1 will have been able to re-charge his batteries by the time he walks on court at Flushing Meadows.

The fact that neither Sam Querrey nor John Isner have been able to build on their fine early season form in these two big U.S. Open Series events is a worry for American hopes at the U.S. Open but Fish’s performance here has been a big plus and he must feel confident of at least equaling his best showing at the Open which came in 2008 when he reached the quarterfinal.