Stockholm: Roger Federer beat Germany's Florian Mayer 6-4, 6-3 to win the Stockholm Open on Sunday, matching Pete Sampras' total of 64 career titles.
Federer didn't have it all his own way in claiming his third title of the year at the Royal Tennis Hall against the 47th-ranked Mayer.
The unorthodox German broke Federer in the seventh game, before Federer started spraying some trademark winners to come back and take the set.
Federer showed glimpses of his best form in the second set, mixing power and finesse to outclass Mayer and win the match in 63 minutes.
Federer broke with the score at 3-2 in the second with a drop shot and played a sliced backhand that Mayer could only watch as he took the score to 5-2.
Since 1968, only Jimmy Connors (109), Ivan Lendl (94) and John McEnroe (77) have won more singles tournaments than Federer and Sampras.
Federer, the 16-time Grand Slam winner, continues to reach new milestones with every season. On Friday, he won his 50th match of the year, becoming only the fifth man, and the first since Sampras, to win 50 matches in at least nine straight years in the Open era.
Federer received a standing ovation from the 5,200 crowd as Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria presented him with the trophy, in what was his first appearance at the tournament for a decade.
The unseeded Mayer, who is still to win an ATP title, was appearing in his third career final and first in four years. He knocked out second-seeded Robin Soderling in the quarterfinals and his unorthodox style also gave Federer difficulty throughout the match.
But Federer has now beaten Mayer in all three of their encounters without losing a set. Indeed, Federer has only lost five matches against players ranked above 40 in the past five years.
Federer had to come from a set behind to beat fellow-Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka in the quarterfinals and was broken in the third game of Saturday's seminfinal against fourth-seeded Ivan Ljubicic, before coming back to win the match.
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