Roger Federer completed an almost perfect week by winning back the Dubai Open title he lost to Rafael Nadal last year.

The triple Grand Slam titleholder from Switzerland started the week by equalling Jimmy Connors's 30-year-old record of 160 consecutive weeks as No 1 and ended it with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Mikhail Youzhny, the unseeded Russian, in the final.

"I had a bit of a rough start here, and struggled in the early rounds. And Mikhail made a good start and I had to react," said Federer, referring to an early 0-2 deficit.

"But I am full of confidence and am on a great run. I did react and then my game came together nicely."

It extended Federer's career-best run of consecutive wins to 41, equaling the achievement of Bjorn Borg, who was present watching the amazing Swiss player.

Federer also remains on course to equal Guillermo Vilas's all-time record of 46 successive victories at the next tournament, in Indian Wells, starting next week.

"You always try to make the best of it," Federer commented. "Of course I usually play well in Indian Wells, but I will have to be at my best (to equal the record)."

Federer on Saturday also launched into strong criticism of what he called "the bad situation" over the incorrect reinstatement of a player at the ATP tournament in Las Vegas, and alleged that the ATP chief executive Etienne de Villiers had "burnt his fingers."

The world No 1 looked annoyed as he talked about the controversy which developed two days ago after James Blake was wrongly given a place in the quarterfinals and de Villiers apologized for mistakenly intervening.

Federer also predicted that the ATP's experimental round-robin system which led to the confusion and to the reinstatement of Evgeny Korolev, the Russian player, would be abandoned by the end of this year.

"Everyone knows that I was against it in the first place," he said. "It's very disappointing that things like this have to happen before you realize that actually this system was not going to work.

"And I've always said you have to keep tennis the way it is and not try to change and mix it up and try too many things at the same time. And now he's burned his hand on this that's for sure.

"I doubt that it is going to happen next year - the round-robin system. It's going to be interesting to see the reaction now, because they are definitely under pressure now and especially the ones involved. I think it's a very bad situation that happened, so we'll see what happens."

(China Daily via AFP March 5, 2007)