Federer and Schnyder breeze into third round

Swiss tennis players Roger Federer and Patty Schnyder battled windy conditions at the US Open in New York on Thursday but won without dropping a set.

Federer fired 15 aces on his way to a 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 win over 104th-ranked Andreas Beck of Germany at the $22.7 million (SFr23 million) tournament.

“It’s about saving your energy for the really big match coming up, maybe the next one,” Federer said, perhaps mindful that he was pushed to five sets in the opening round at Wimbledon in June before eventually losing in the quarterfinals at a second consecutive major tournament.

“It’s the perfect start, sure. I played on Monday, had two days off. I had another easy one physically today, and here I am in the third round feeling like I’m completely in the tournament,” said Federer, a five-time US Open champion and the only man left in the field who has won it.

He now faces Paul-Henri Mathieu of France, ranked 109.

Also on Thursday 31-year-old Patty Schnyder, now ranked 51, beat 22nd seed María José Martínez Sánchez from Spain 7-6, 6-4. Schnyder’s deepest run in New York was in 1998 and 2008, when she reached the quarterfinals. She now plays 15th seed Yanina Wickmayer from Belgium.

The two remaining Swiss players in New York, Stanislas Wawrinka and Marco Chiudinelli, are both in action on Friday.

Chiudinelli faces local boy John Isner, seeded 18, and will be hoping for a quicker match than the ten-hour epic Isner was involved in at Wimbledon. Wawrinka, seeded 25, plays Juan Ignacio Chela from Argentina, currently ranked 50.

Hurricane Earl is projected to bring a 50 per cent chance of showers or thunderstorms to the tournament on Saturday.

swissinfo.ch and agencies