Tennis: Federer Braces Himself for Hot Blast From Chile

Fernando Gonzalez is likely to receive confirmation this morning that Roger Federer deals with accurate cannons just as harshly as he does with loose ones - and the loose cannon that Gonzalez agrees he once was lost all his nine matches against the world number one between 2004 and 06.

It is important for the sport that the Chilean is not discouraged, though, because, in his boisterous surge to the men's final, he showed the sort of qualities that suggest, given time, he might develop into a player capable of discomfiting Federer. At present, there is only one player who is able to do this and even Rafael Nadal needs clay courts under his feet to do it with any consistency. Nadal was one of two men to beat Federer in 2006 and three of his four wins were on clay. Andy Murray was the other player to beat Federer last year and he, like Gonzalez, has what might be called interesting potential.

At 26, Gonzalez, a six-footer with quick feet and hands, is a late developer in terms of grand-slam success, which is not necessarily against him, although there have been few instances in recent times of players making much of themselves if they have not won a major by the time they are 25. What is a little different with Gonzalez is that he is such a destructive hitter and, with the punctilious American coach Larry Stefanki now in his corner, he is at last starting to use this power efficiently.

Stefanki proved just how good he is during successful partnerships with top players such as John McEnroe, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Marcelo Rios and, although his spell with Tim Henman was conspicuously unproductive, he was the coach Murray targeted before ending up with Brad Gilbert. All the evidence is that Stefanki and Gonzalez used the short break after the 2006 season as well as anyone.

'Before I used to hit, hit, hit and sometimes I won the point and sometimes I lost it,' he says. 'Now I'm trying to find the right opportunity and stay a little bit calm, because my hitting can be a bit crazy sometimes.' Just how much more disciplined he now is was borne out by the fact that in his semi-final victory over Tommy Haas on Friday he struck 42 winners and limited his unforced errors to three, which was Federeresque in its parsimony.

Gonzalez was always a flair player whose game was irresistible when he hit one of his hot patches. The trouble was these invariably lasted no more than five or six games and opponents knew it was simply a case of waiting until the fire went out. Now they are likely to wait in vain. Nadal and Tommy Haas, Gonzalez's quarter-final and semi-final victims, mustered just 15 games between them as they were blown off court waiting for the Chilean to revert to the flaky type they used to know.

Before getting too carried away, though, Gonzalez's pursuit of Federer is by no means certain to see a swift narrowing of the gap between them. The fast courts at Melbourne Park have provided Gonzalez with the quick, even-bouncing conditions that particularly suit his game and he did not dominate all his opponents in the way he did Nadal and Haas. Juan Martin Del Potro, an 18-year-old Argentine with a big serve, seemed to have Gonzalez's measure in the second round when he won a tiebreaker to open a two-sets-to-one lead. He then started cramping and had to pull out in the fifth.

The 9-0 margin that Federer held over Gonzalez before today's match is the sort of statistic that, however buoyed up the Chilean might have been, was not likely to have strayed far from his mind at any point in the contest. And while Gonzalez laboured under this one, there were plenty of figures to spur Federer on. These included the one victory he needed to move clear in fifth place in winning streaks by men in the Open era - he was unbeaten with 35 straight matches before today - and the chance to become the first player since Bjorn Borg at the 1980 French Open to win a grand slam without dropping a set.

But however compelling the statistical evidence, Federer's form was by far the more persuasive factor in making him the favourite to win today and claim his tenth grand-slam title. (This is just four fewer than the record, Pete Sampras's 14 - and Federer is still only 25.)

Federer eclipsed the stars of the future, as represented by Serbia's Novak Djokovic, and those of the present, Andy Roddick, on his way to the final. His game, rather than growing stale through the routine of winning consistently, seems to be developing ever deeper into the realms of excellence. Even if he stopped playing now he would deserve comparison with the very best and there is absolutely no sign that he wants to do anything other than keep going and keep improving.

Federer played so well through the first six rounds that not only those who watched him marvelled. After thrashing Roddick in the semi-finals, he said: 'Everything worked - I'm shocked myself.'