Anyone watching yesterdays Halle grass court match between Roger Federer and Benoire Paire would have been forgiven for mistaking Paire for Federer during many of the games they fought toe to toe in, if said person didn't know who Federer was.

Paire struck his backhand incredibly cleanly and came up with some magical points against Federer. It wasn't like Paire played out of his skin, anyone who watches this frenchmen play regularly will know he is a talented tennis player with considerable skill when he strikes a hot spell. Like Kyrgios, Paire also has the ability to go hell for leather on his second serve to clean up with some easy aces (although not as regularly as Kyrgios).

Point of the match for me was Paire's drop shot followed by a volley lob where he made Federer look like an average player. Federer eventually prevailed 2-1 in sets to Paire but not before a big scare in the final set where he managed to scrape through on a tie break 9-7. This sort of match score is becoming Deja Vu for Federer who had a remarkably similar affair with Kyrigos in an earlier round, again scraping through in a final set tie break. Federer fans will argue this shows how resilient he is under pressure and others will see this as a sign that sooner rather than later he's due another stumble.

But going beyond the great tennis that was played between the two yesterday this match only served to highlight my earlier opinion nicely where I laid out why Federer could fail to win his 9th Wimbledon title.

I maintain that this years Wimbledon is going to be one of the toughest yet for Federer to win. There are a large array of talented players hungry for success at the oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. Paire wasn't one of the players I included in this write up of Federer's competition to watch out for, which goes to show there are going to be some real tough matches he will have to endure. I wouldn't be surprised if he plays a couple of 5 set matches before he even reaches the final.

Add to this how well Djokovic is playing after returning from injury (he prevailed comfortably against Dimitrov yesterday at Queens - see my first article on Scorum covering Djokovic for this) and there's plenty of reason to doubt Federer will win Wimbledon. Djokovic is my dark horse tip to win Wimbledon by the way.