Federer Defends Cincinnati Title Over Fish

Roger Federer won his first non-major final of the year after losing 3 finals in a row (on 3 different surfaces: Madrid to Rafael Nadal, Halle to Lleyton Hewitt and Toronto to Andy Murray) in Cincinnati on Sunday over American Mardy Fish. The title was his 53rd overall, tying Bjorn Borg on the all-time list at 5th. It was Federer's 17th ATP Masters series title, tying Andre Agassi but still one behind Nadal's 18.
Federer has now won the Cincinnati title in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2010. Next year it will become a combined male-female 8-day event (immediately following simultaneous men's and women's tournaments in Toronto and Montreal).
The match with Fish was a close, high-quality 3-set affair featuring 2 tiebreaks, one break of serve and only 6 breakpoints between the two players. The final score was 6-7(5) 7-6(1) 6-4. In the first set, Federer had 4 breakpoints and failed to convert any of them due to brilliant serving by Fish. Federer faced one breakpoint in the second set but was able to get through to a tiebreak. In the first set tiebreaker Federer held a 5-4 lead, but Fish played a brilliant point to even the breaker at 5-all and Federer played a loose point to be down 6-5. Fish won the first set on a service winner. In the second set tiebreaker Federer was much sharper, jumping to a quick 4-1 lead and never looked in danger of losing that breaker. The only break in the match came in the 9th game of the third set where, for once, after facing a break point Fish was unable to make a first serve and eventually lost the breakpoint and the game, and eventually the match when Federer served it out pretty easily on his second match point.

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