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Simson Garcia | Sports Editor<\/span><\/p>\n The tennis world was in for another Roger Federer show at the Australian Open finals this past Saturday. On Jan. 28, the No. 2 world ranked Swiss rallied to defeat the No. 6 ranked Croatian, Marin \u010cili\u0107, in five closely battled sets: 6-2, 7-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-1.<\/span> <\/span><\/span>Contact the author at journalsports@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n Photo by: theguardian.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Simson Garcia | Sports Editor The tennis world was in for another Roger Federer show at the Australian Open finals this past Saturday. On Jan. 28, the No. 2 world ranked Swiss rallied to defeat the No. 6 ranked Croatian, Marin \u010cili\u0107, in five closely battled sets: 6-2, 7-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-1. After weeks of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1030,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span>After weeks of anticipation, the championship was finally here <\/span>\u2014<\/span> but for Federer, the tournament up until then looked like smooth sailing, having never lost a set. For part of the finals in particular, he looked to be the Federer of old, and in other parts looked to be old Federer.<\/span>
\n<\/span>The first set was prime Federer, and was a quick and momentous one. To gain advantage, it only took a few rallies for the 36-year-old to score it at 3-0 before finishing off the set comfortably at 6-2.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Viewers who might have switched stations assuming Federer would get the easy victory in another dominant performance had another thing coming. <\/span>
\n<\/span>\u010cili\u0107 made it a game and pushed Federer like only few have. After some intense interchanging of leads, the 29-year old \u010cili\u0107 gained traction in the second set taking Federer to a long tie break and overcoming him, 7-6, to tie the match at 1-apiece. <\/span>
\n<\/span>Then, Federer hit back in fed fashion dominating the third set, 6-3. He struggled, however, serving against \u010cili\u0107 in the fourth set. The tense back and forth action of the match continued including a very long rally of 18 shots before \u010cili\u0107 won three straight games to go up 6-3. <\/span>
\n<\/span>Three games into the final set could have gone either way but Federer found his serve and stride en route to a 6-1 win and 20th Grand Slam title. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n