Roger Federer was clinical on court as he dismissed Jack Sock 6-1, 7-6(4) to set up an all-Swiss final date with Stan Wawrinka at the BNP Paribas Open.

The 35-year-old Federer, who believes he is still on the comeback path, reached his seventh final at Indian Wells, aiming for his fifth title there. But this time, it will different from his four victories back in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2012. This time, the veteran is ranked 10th in the world, taking on the top surviving seed in the final.

In the last few years, Wawrinka has taken over as the higher-ranked Swiss player and is currently ranked third in the world, and with the exits of Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, is the top remaining seed at Indian Wells.

But rankings don’t seem to bother Federer much. When asked if he saw himself back as World No 1 , he shrugged it off. “Sure I’d love to be number one again. But anything else other than world number one for me is not interesting. So that’s why the rankings is not a priority right now,” he said after his semi-final win over Sock.

So, is it No 1 or nothing or simply being realistic? “Because I’m not going to be playing so much you would think I would need to win probably another Grand Slam for that to happen,” he added.

Play

Talking about his comprehensive win, Federer said, “I think I definitely played great in the first set. I came out and really saw the ball well. I think Jack didn’t have his best first set, but I found a way to take advantage of that quickly, hardly made any mistakes and was able to press.”

“The second set was more like what I expected the first set to be, to be quite honest, before the match. It was hard to break and return well off Jack’s heavy serve. I had to rely a lot on my second serve. I’m happy it was there, because I didn’t serve particularly well in that second set. Things got a bit more complicated, but it was definitely a good feeling to get through in two sets and to be back in another finals here,’ he added.

And what did Federer have to say after coming out on top of an exceedingly tough draw, also known as the ‘Quarter of Death’. “I forgot how tough the draw actually was,” Federer said of the quarter that included him along with world number two Novak Djokovic and number six Rafael Nadal, along with former US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro, and Next Gen stars Nick Kyrgios and Alexander Zverev.

Only Federer could ‘forget’ about this bombshell of a draw.