Wimbledon 2009: Roger Federer strolls past Guillermo Garcia-Lopez

Roger Federer the sedative. Suda-Fed administered by the Fed Express. Yes it's true, Federer gave the mundane its beautiful due, as John Updike might have put it.

Federer’s stroll into the third round in an hour and 29 minutes, 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 proved the perfect antidote after the Maria Sharapova extended feature that drained Centre court of emotion.

Sharapova was Federer’s dancing partner at the Champions Ball in 2004. I bet he never stepped on her toes. On Wednesday his relentless brilliance accounted for Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in apposite short order.

If Sharapova’s demise against Gisela Dulko was comfortably the match of the tournament, there was finery, too, in the clinical elegance of Federer’s performance.

Garcia-Lopez, a perfectly respectable player, followed the example of so many others, unravelling under the weight of Federer’s impossible variations. Rarely has violence been done to a tennis ball with such grace.

On this occasion Federer left the slacks at home, though he did persist with the waistcoat. As the pair knocked up Centre Court was still discharging the energy that had built over the preceding two hours; the exits spilling humanity into the concessions below.

The genius of Federer is the sustained quality of his play, the improbable consistency. He was faced with the same free-swinging threat that pricked Andy Murray’s bubble the night before. Garcia-Lopez hits a fierce ball off both sides and wields the racket with the same single handed grip as his tormentor.

He hit some sumptuous winners of his own, pinning the ball episodically to the lines. Repeating the dose was the challenge he could not meet.

Furthermore he appeared fixated with the idea of vulnerability in the Federer backhand, firing balls disproportionately into that side of the court. Maybe he paid too much attention to Murray’s assertion that Federer is not the man on grass that Pete Sampras was.

You wonder why Murray bothered with that one. At 14 grand slams a-piece there is not a point to make. Can’t they both be extraordinary? Does one have to be better than the other?

Federer ended the backhand debate with a drilled, top-spin winner down the line to reach deuce in the fifth game.

Whenever trouble neared, and that wasn’t often, Federer pressed the excellence button. Ominous is not the word. “I didn’t have to play my very best," Federer said. "I was solid and that is what I needed today.”