Five takeaways from Federer's Round of 16 victory at Indian Wells

Roger Federer continued his perfect start to the season on Wednesday afternoon, beating Jeremy Chardy 7-5, 6-4 in an hour and 22 minutes for a spot in the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

Here are five takeaways from the world No. 1’s straight-set victory over the Frenchman:

1. Federer was on his game. Chardy had given Federer trouble in the past—not only did he have a win over him at Rome in 2014, but he pushed two of their other three previous meetings to three sets.

But this time Federer was just too good in the most crucial moments, getting the first break of the match in the second-to-last game of the first set and then comfortably serving out that first set. He then did the exact same thing in the second set—breaking and then easily serving out the match.

Not only did Federer not face a single break point in 11 service games on the day, he also won all 25 of his first-serve points. He was also an amazing 79 percent on second-serve points (19-of-24).

2. He’s now 15-0 on the year. This is actually the 36-year-old’s second-best start to a season ever. Federer got off to a 16-0 start to the 2006 season as a 24-year-old, winning back-to-back titles at Doha and the Australian Open that year before his streak finally ended in the final of Dubai (to Rafael Nadal).

Two more wins at Indian Wells, and Federer will have his best start to a season in his career.

Federer vs. Chardy match point and post-match interview:

3. Federer now has 60 career match wins at Indian Wells. With his win today, Federer’s career record at Indian Wells is now 60-11. He already had the record for most wins in the tournament’s history.

Indian Wells is actually the sixth tournament at which Federer has won at least 60 matches, after the Australian Open (94-13), Wimbledon (91-11), the US Open (82-12), Basel (66-9) and Roland Garros (65-16).

4. He’s through to the Indian Wells quarterfinals for the 12th time in his career. He’s now made the quarterfinals here in 12 of his 17 appearances, and he almost always goes even further—he’s only lost in the quarterfinals of Indian Wells one time (that solitary loss was a 6-4, 6-2 defeat to Nadal in 2013).

Federer has gone on to win the title five times before—in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2012 and 2017.

5. Next up for Federer is a rematch of his Australian Open semifinal. Awaiting Federer in the quarterfinals is the No. 23 seed, Hyeon Chung, who’s taken out No. 12 seed Tomas Berdych and No. 30 seed Pablo Cuevas en route to the first Masters 1000 quarterfinal of his blossoming career.

The pair’s only previous meeting came just a matter of weeks ago in the semifinals of the Australian Open, where Federer stormed out to a 6-1, 5-2 lead before Chung had to retire from the match due to a foot blister. He was the first Korean player, male or female, ever to reach a Grand Slam semifinal.

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