Federer stumbles, recovers

Associated Press

PARIS

Chasing a shot, Roger Federer caught his right shoe in the French Open’s red clay, twisting that foot awkwardly and tumbling to the ground.

Soon enough, he was in a real rut, in danger of his earliest exit from a Grand Slam tournament in nine years.

Federer regrouped and restored order eventually, coming back from a two-sets-to-one deficit to beat 15th-seeded Gilles Simon of France 6-1, 4-6, 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 Sunday in the fourth round to reach his 36th consecutive major quarterfinal.

“I didn’t hurt myself or anything,” Federer said. “But maybe I did lose that touch of confidence for a little bit, and then I was out of the match there for a bit.”

During a rare stretch of mid-match mediocrity from the owner of a record 17 Grand Slam championships — the 2009 French Open trophy is part of his collection — Federer lost 10 of 13 games, including the one in which he fell.

“I didn’t give him time,” said Simon, a one-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist. “I managed to start moving him around a bit.”

But Simon, a former member of the top 10, could not keep Federer down. Able to “tidy up my play,” as he put it, Federer went from hitting more than twice as many unforced errors as Simon in the second and third sets, 25-12, to generating more than twice as many winners in the third and fourth, 29-14.

“When things turn nasty,” Simon said, “he responds well.”

Federer said the match will give him “a lot of info” heading into his quarterfinal against another Frenchman, No. 6-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

So far, all of the top three men in the tournament — No. 1 Novak Djokovic, No. 2 Federer and No. 3 Rafael Nadal, the seven-time champion — have had issues. Nadal lost a set in each of his first two matches; Djokovic needed his upper right arm treated by a trainer Saturday.