Roger Federer kept alive his dream of winning all four Grand Slam titles by reaching the French Open semi-finals with a 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 win over Croatian Mario Ancic on Tuesday.
The Swiss had walked on to a sun-baked centre court on the back of a 25-match winning streak in major tournaments. Although he was tested at times by Ancic, he booked a place in the last four against David Nalbandian of Argentina. Nalbandian beat Russian sixth seed Nikolay Davydenko 6-3, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.
"I've had a good match," said the top seed, who is bidding to become only the third man to hold all four major crowns at once.
"I'm very happy because it's never easy to play against Mario, never easy to beat him because of his serve. I'm happy to be in the last four, it was my first goal.
"I'm much calmer than at the beginning. It's normal because there is much more pressure when you start the tournament, you do not want to lose in the first round."
The big-serving Ancic played his heart out for a set-and-a-half but in the end he could only shake his head in frustration as Federer recorded his third win in four meetings against the Croatian.
Ancic let four break points slip in the opening set but kept pace with the world number one until the final game. A jittery service game allowed Federer to snatch the break and the set after Ancic flayed a forehand wide.
The world number one, however, ran into a spot of bother in the second.
Ancic captured the Federer serve in the opening game and could have made matters worse if he had converted any of the three break opportunities he earned at 2-0 up.
Federer dragged himself out of the hole from 0-40 down to win the next five points to limit the damage and went on to capture the last five games of the set in astounding fashion to leave the 12th seed completely deflated.
"I was already very disappointed to be broken because I missed the easiest overhead ever," said Federer, who has dropped just one set en route to reaching his second successive semi-final here. "After that, I was down 2-0, love-40. You can sometimes expect to come out of these. It was the first break that really got me angry.
"Thank God then it was actually a key moment. I really came back strong, I saved all those breakpoints, came back in the match and played really well towards the end of the second.
"From then on I was really in control."
Federer piled on the misery in the third set and at one point he even threw up his arms in bewilderment after conjuring up a seemingly impossible volley winner that fell just inside the baseline.
Ancic, who was the last player to have beaten the triple Wimbledon champion on grass in 2002, succumbed after two hours 17 minutes after putting a service return wide.
Nalbandian, who had never made it past the fourth round at Roland Garros, controlled the key moments of the match to win in two hours 46 minutes.
He won the first two sets in 72 minutes before he lost his way and threw away the third.
The Argentine recovered to wrap up the match on his first match point with a backhand winner.
Nalbandian is one of the few players with a positive record against Federer, even though the Swiss beat him in the Rome Masters semi-final last month.
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