Roger Federer often makes tennis look easy. But even the Swiss star found himself in a ‘Goldilocks’ situation during his 7-6(1), 6-3 victory against John Millman in the first round of the NOVENTI OPEN on Tuesday.

“I am aware that there were way too many errors there. I’ve got to find the right sort of power on the forehand,” Federer said. “Not too soft, not too hard. I’ve got to find the middle ground.”

Federer made an uncharacteristic number of unforced errors off the forehand wing during his first match of the grass-court season. And the 37-year-old knows he’ll need to make adjustments to the relatively lower bounce on this surface compared to when he was competing on clay.

“I was looking for it throughout [with] different balls [compared] to the past few weeks in Paris,” Federer said. “Grass plays different, how much spin I need to put on the ball, how flat I need to go through the ball. So I often played maybe a little bit on the aggressive side in the beginning because I always knew I can pull back a little bit. So of course that shot can only get better. It can’t get worse. There is a level I believe I have on my forehand.”

To be fair to the nine-time Halle champion, he did not play poorly against Millman, who defeated him at last year’s US Open. Federer won 90 per cent (38/42) of his first-serve points and saved the only break point he faced. In the first-set tie-break, the top seed dropped just one point to take command of the match.

“There were definitely some good moments there,” Federer said. “From the baseline all that stuff is only going to get better from here on. So I’m confident there.”

The grass-court season is different than it has been for the past few years for Federer, who competed at the MercedesCup from 2016-18, as he did not play Roland Garros. But after returning to clay for the first time since 2016, Federer is playing a slightly different schedule on grass.

“This is my first match back on the grass. It used to always be here in Halle, my first rounds. It was like back in the days. I always think any way you get through is a good way because the next match will always feel different or better and all that stuff,” Federer said. “Plus I think with this fact of John having beaten me at the US Open, I knew it was going to be tough. So thankfully I wasn’t too nervous.”

Federer now has a 64-7 record in Halle, and he will try to reach his 17th quarter-final at the ATP 500 tournament when he faces former World No. 5 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga next.

The Frenchman has won their past two FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings, at 2016 Monte-Carlo and 2014 Canada. But Federer leads their rivalry 11-6, and he has never failed to advance to the last eight at this event.

German wild cards Dustin Brown/Tim Puetz knocked out reigning Roland Garros champions Kevin Krawietz/Andreas Mies on Tuesday at the NOVENTI OPEN in Halle.

Brown/Puetz saved four of five break points to advance 6-4, 7-5 and reach the quarter-finals at the ATP 500 event. Krawietz/Mies, the fourth seeds, were playing their first match since winning the season’s second Grand Slam. In Paris, the Germans were playing in just their second major together.

They won their maiden ATP Tour doubles team title in February at the New York Open. Brown/Puetz will next meet Ben McLachlan/Jan-Lennard Struff, who beat Matthew Ebden/Denis Kudla 6-4, 6-4.

In other action, third seeds Nikola Mektic/Franko Skugor won 83 per cent of their first-serve points and beat Robin Haase/Frederik Nielsen 6-3, 6-3; David Goffin/Pierre-Hugues Herbert routed Guido Pella/Joao Sousa 6-1, 6-3; and Austrians Oliver Marach/Jurgen Melzer squeaked past Marcelo Demoliner/Divij Sharan 7-5, 7-6(5).

Rain washed out all singles and doubles play on Tuesday at the Fever-Tree Championships in London.

Did You Know?
In four sets of singles and doubles play on Tuesday, Goffin won 24 of the 30 games he played against Pella. The Belgian defeated the Argentine 6-1, 6-1 in singles.

Nine-time champion Roger Federer played steadily enough to start his grass-court season on Tuesday at the NOVENTI OPEN in Halle.

The 37-year-old Swiss avenged his 2018 US Open fourth-round loss to John Millman to make the second round in Germany, beating the Aussie 7-6(1), 6-3.

Read More: Federer: ‘The Pressure Is High For Me Too’

Federer didn’t face a break point until he served for the match, and he saw only two on Millman’s racquet, both in the sixth game of the second set, when Millman hit a forehand off his back foot long to give Federer the break.

The top seed fell behind 0/30 in the next game but escaped danger by winning four straight points. Federer is making his 17^th Halle appearance and is trying to secure his first double-digit title haul at a single event.

Federer has also won nine titles at the Swiss Indoors Basel, his hometown tournament. Rafael Nadal is the only man in the Open Era to reach double-digit titles at a single event, with 12 Roland Garros titles and 11 trophies in Monte-Carlo and Barcelona.

Federer will next face Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who beat countryman Benoit Paire 6-4, 7-5 to improve to 4-1 in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series. Federer leads his rivalry with Tsonga 11-6, but the Frenchman has won their past two matchups – at 2016 Monte-Carlo and 2014 Canada. The two have played on grass only once, a five-set win for Tsonga in the 2011 Wimbledon quarter-finals.

Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff picked up his first win at his home ATP 500 tournament (1-6), beating Serbian Laslo Djere 6-4, 6-4. Struff, playing at a career-high No. 35 in the ATP Rankings, improved to 22-14 this season and will next meet third-seeded Russian Karen Khachanov.

Read More: The Difference For Struff? He Has An Opinion

France’s Richard Gasquet, a three-time grass-court titlist, won 81 per cent of his service points and beat German Peter Gojowczyk 6-3, 6-4 in only 70 minutes. Gasquet will next play seventh seed Roberto Bautista Agut. The Spaniard didn’t face a break point and beat American Taylor Fritz 7-6(10), 6-0

Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo have won 10 tour-level titles since beginning their full-time partnership in 2017. And not only have they qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals in both of their seasons together, but they are currently the highest-ranked ATP Doubles Team.

The secret to their success is not a specific skill, but that they are not satisfied.

“I think the most important thing is to keep improving and to keep changing. New teams are playing, they’re playing differently. We cannot be playing the same way always because they know what we’re going to do,” Melo told ATPTour.com. “I think the key is to keep improving and changing and looking what other teams are doing for us to keep doing good results.”

This is the Polish-Brazilian duo’s third full season as a team, but they showed signs of what they are capable of even before that. In 2015, they competed together for the first time in Vienna, while Melo was still partnering Ivan Dodig. They won that tournament.

The following year, Melo and Dodig decided to end their five-year partnership, so Melo approached Kubot about playing some tournaments together late in 2016 to see how it would go. Melo and Kubot triumphed in Vienna again, making the decision to become a full-time team easy.

But the wins did not pile up as easily early in 2017, as they lost five of their first nine matches that season, winning multiple matches at an event just once through five tournaments.

“Normally when you start a team you want to play a lot together. You put a lot of pressure on yourselves and want the results tomorrow. Sometimes it’s not like that,” Melo said. “You need to get used to how each other plays and we started not so great, but after two, three months we started playing better together, playing as a team.”

Kubot and Melo won six tour-level titles that year, including three ATP Masters 1000 trophies and a Wimbledon victory. They finished the season as the year-end No. 1 ATP Doubles Team. But even after qualifying for the season finale at The O2 again last year, they are still looking for more ways to improve.

“We know our patterns and our opponents know our patterns, so we still look forward to improving our games every day and trying to be better,” Kubot told ATPTour.com. “Every time we sit down, we talk and we always look for ways to improve and look for something new we can add to our games.”

Melo noted that with the increasing presence of singles players competing on the doubles court, it can be tough given that there is plenty of film and statistics on them, and not always as much on their opponents. But they continue to adapt, reaching at least the semi-finals at three of this year’s first five Masters 1000 tournaments.

“I think we play different, me and Kubot. I have one way to play, Kubot has another way. So we are always changing. We don’t play the same way. We can change a lot during the matches,” Melo said. “We play very good Match Tie-breaks normally and in doubles today it’s very important to play very good Match Tie-breaks.”

Kubot and Melo hold a 41-17 record in Match Tie-breaks during their partnership, a winning rate of more than 70 per cent. After splitting sets, the Match Tie-break could go either team’s way, given it’s the first pair to win 10 points. But Melo doesn’t see it that way.

“I don’t agree that it’s a coin flip. I think no-Ad it is, but not Match Tie-breaks. Those are 10 points, so if sometimes you start down 4/1, 5/2, you still have a chance to come back,” Melo said. “You have to be always mentally strong to play Match Tie-breaks and even if you are up, you need to finish and if you are down, you have a chance to come back.”

It doesn’t hurt that they enjoy the pressure of those big moments, and they are never afraid to be aggressive when it counts the most.

“I think Marcelo has, for me, maybe, the best reactions of all the players at the moment on Tour, so his reactions are very good, he’s very quick at the net. He has very good volleys,” Kubot said. “He’s a player who’s made for the big shots, so he likes when there is more pressure on the court because he likes to take the responsibility on his shoulders.”

Kubot and Melo are the top seeds at this week’s NOVENTI OPEN, where they will try to win a third consecutive title. The top seeds begin their campaign against Dutchmen Wesley Koolhof and Matwe Middelkoop.

For a moment, you would have thought that Benoit Paire and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga were playing a game of football rather than a tennis match on Stadion Court at the NOVENTI OPEN on Tuesday.

Serving at 1-1 in the second set, Paire let slip his racquet after striking a serve. But instead of watching in disappointment as Tsonga’s return bounced past him, the World No. 28 got his feet involved, continuing the rally by playing foot-tennis. Eventually, Paire went for and missed a bicycle kick, but the crowd erupted with applause anyway. 

There was still business to get to, and Tsonga won the match 6-4, 7-5 to take a 4-1 lead in the pair’s FedEx ATP Head2Head series. The former World No. 5 will next play nine-time champion and top seed Roger Federer or Aussie John Millman.

Rain at The Queen’s Club, venue of the Fever-Tree Championships, is delaying the start of play on Tuesday.

The first of the day’s 10 singles and two doubles matches were scheduled to begin at 12 noon local time, but covers remain on the grass courts. At 2:30 p.m., tournament organisers revised the schedule.

REVISED SCHEDULE – TUESDAY, 18 JUNE 2019

CENTRE COURT start 3:30 pm
[7] S. Wawrinka (SUI) vs [WC] D. Evans (GBR) 
[1] S. Tsitsipas (GRE) vs K. Edmund (GBR) 
G. Dimitrov (BUL) vs [8] F. Auger-Aliassime (CAN) 

COURT 1 start 3:30 pm
[WC] J. Clarke (GBR) vs L. Pouille (FRA) 
[3] J. del Potro (ARG) vs D. Shapovalov (CAN) 
N. Kyrgios (AUS) vs A. Mannarino (FRA) 

COURT 5 start 3:30 pm
M. Fucsovics (HUN) vs [WC] F. Lopez (ESP) 
M. Cecchinato (ITA) vs [6] M. Raonic (CAN) 

COURT 6 start 3:30 pm
J. Chardy (FRA) vs M. Kukushkin (KAZ) 
A. de Minaur (AUS) vs [Q] A. Bedene (SLO)