Federer, Ferrer advance to Miami 3rd round

Switzerland’s Roger Federer continued his strong start to the 2014 season with another victory on Friday, defeating bigserving Croat Ivo Karlovic 64, 76 (74) to advance to the third round of the Sony Open Tennis event in Miami.

The fifthranked Swiss, who had defeated Karlovic in 10 of their previous 11 contests, completely dominated his service games en route to the routine win in an hour and 14 minutes.

The 32yearold Federer put 75 percent of his first serves in play and won 94 percent of those points against his slowfooted opponent. The Swiss was just as dominant on his second serve, winning 12 of those 13 points.

Karlovic, 35, struck 13 aces to keep himself in the match, but his serve abandoned him when he needed it most in the secondset tiebreaker.

Federer, who won this event in 2005 and 2006, will next play the winner of the secondround match between Spain’s Fernando Verdasco and Dutchman Thiemo De Bakker.

The Swiss, buoyed by a racquet change and new coach Stefan Edberg, reached the semifinals of the Australian Open, won a title in Dubai in February and reached the final of last week’s BNP Paribas event in Indian Wells, California.

In other action Friday afternoon, Spanish world No. 4 David Ferrer cruised to a comfortable 64, 60 victory over Russia’s Teymuraz Gabashvili.

Coming back from a leg injury that forced him to pull out of Indian Wells, Ferrer battled through a tough first set in which he needed to stave off five break points and then completely dominated the second set with his return game.

Gabashvili got away with a low firstserve percentage in the first set, but Ferrer made him pay for too many second serves in the latter part of the match.

After winning 70 percent of his secondserve points in the first set, the Russian managed just a 27 percent winning percentage on those points in the second set and the match turned into a rout.

In other secondround results Friday afternoon, Spain’s Tommy Robredo edged Austrian Dominic Thiem 64, 76 (108), Frenchman Richard Gasquet topped Colombia’s Alejandro Gonzalez 76 (97), 64, South Africa’s Kevin Anderson defeated Argentina’s Horacio Zeballos 64, 63, and Germany’s Florian Mayer trounced Croatia’s Ivan Dodig 63, 62.

In the women’s draw, Spain’s Garbiñe Muguruza, the No. 30 seed, was upset 36, 76 (86), 61 in the second round by Croatia’s Ajla Tomljanovic.

The Sony Open Tennis tournament is one of the biggest hardcourt events on the ATP and WTA calendars.