Federer completes hat-trick of Halle wins

Roger Federer completed a hat-trick of wins in the Halle ATP grass court tournament here on Sunday defeating Russia's Marat Safin 6-4, 6-7 (6/8), 6-4 in the final. It was the perfect Wimbledon preparation for the world No.1 as he also won here in the two previous years and went on to win at the All England Club.
But for much of the match he was given a stern workout by Safin, who played one of his best matches to date on grass and on a surface he usually struggles to play on.
Federer had looked sluggish in his opening tie against Sweden's Robin Soderling, but he had improved with each round, fine-tuning his grasscourt game.
Safin on the other hand barely conceals his dislike of playing on grass and his best performance at Wimbledon in five attempts was a quarter-final appearance in 2001.
The Swiss top seed got off to the perfect start winning the first three games, but Safin hit back with a service break in the fifth game and levelled at 3-3.
The Russian was holding serve comfortably enough until the 10th game when from deuce he first hit a backhand long to give Federer set point and then totally miscued a forehand.
That resulted in a bout of some typically Safinesque racket hurling, but he kept his concentration, and had Federer struggling at times with his angles and speed about the court.
Two break points were on offer to the Australian Open champion in the third game, but Federer's serve got him out of trouble on both occasions.
Four games later it was a similar scenario, Safin getting to 15-40 on the Federer serve only for the title-holder to hold firm with a shaply-angled volley followed by a service winner.
If anything, it was Federer who was having the most trouble on his serve, but he was imperial on the big points and sent the set into a tie-break.
Twelve straight points went with serve in the decider, until Federer failed to pick up a raking Safin forehand that landed on the baseline. The Russian then sent down an ace to level the set scores.
There was a whiff of a major upset in the air, but Federer eased ahead in the third game of the deciding set when Safin floated a volley long on break point against his serve.
That was all the Swiss star needed and he comfortably held his own service four times to complete the win.
The Halle title brought Federer his 29th consecutive win on grass since losing to Croatia's Mario Ancic in the first round at Wimbledon in 2002.