Federer through - so what's new?

Russian Nikolay Davydenko has a history of troubling Roger Federer on the tennis court - it is a very minor piece of history at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 and those 2 defeats will never reoccur Roger assures us.
For even when Davydenko scaled the dizzy heights of men's tennis and hung around the number 3 or 4 spot for awhile, beating the Swiss great was a matter of fancy.
As things improve for Nikolay, his ranking coming back to something close to civilised of late, he is yet to earn the luxury of a seeding at a major, therefore the Aus Open draw threw him this round two nasty.
Roger in round one coasted to bring an end to Benoit Paire's singles obligations, and that was on the back of no competitive matches, while Davydenko dismissed Dudi Sela, offering him a single set for his troubles as he waved him goodbye from Melbourne.

The conditions were still reasonably uncomfortable, certainly for the spectators, at the start of the match so maybe that could be a factor in the tennis being slightly down on the standard expected in a Federer match.  However, both managed to win points when they had to and occasionally played shots with which to fire up the crowd.

Both players played baseline tennis but Davydenko will never win that way because Federer is the better exponent and will, more times than not, eventually either hit a clean winner, force a direct error or put an opponent out of position and out of the point.

Nikolay allowed Federer that latitude tonight, and it only took until the Russian's second service game for it to begin to take effect.  The break points were saved, but it served as a warning for what was to occur in the sixth game where the scoreboard reflected the folly of Davydenko's conservative tactics leaving Federer a 4-2 leader.

The area of concern for Roger amidst his success had to be his backhand.  It was all over the shop and a more adept rival would have been able to exploit the weakness better than Davydenko, who was in enough trouble of his own not to have to worry about Federer's tribulations.

No more threats to either service game for the remainder of the set as the two old associates laughed and chatted about the junior days while hitting a few balls around the park until everyone was ready for the next instalment.  For the record Federer won the chocolates 6-3.

Set 2 began with so much promise for Nikolay and at 1-1 he believed this could be the moment.  It certainly turned out to be as Roger Federer introduced the idea of playing a forehand to break the Russian service.  Yes backhands were garbage tonight so it paid to stick to what works best.

The tennis after that, while far from scintillating, did have enough OK bits to satisfy, and occasional glimpses of Federer magic in case we had forgotten who it was on court.  The chair umpire could have called it earlier but instead let the players have some free practise until he had enough and gave another set to Federer 6-3. 

For years the rule was that if Federer won the first 2 sets at a Grand Slam event he never lost the match - that was until Tsonga became the exception in the 2011 Wimbledon quarters.  Davydenko would surely not create history tonight and join him.  Well the eternal optimists had even their highest hopes dashed when in the first game of Set 3 Nikolay fell on his double fault edged sword to send Roger on his merry path to a straight sets victory. 6-3 6-3 6-4

Federer now booked to beat, sorry meet, Bernard Tomic (getting a little ahead of myself) in the third round.  What we will see from Roger is a more expansive game from the champion, not one that he chooses to employ but one that the Tomic game requires him to introduce.  The match up will be attractive however close the score.