By Chris Oddo | Saturday, June 14, 2014

Roger Federer is liking the Halle grass once again.

The six-time Gerry Weber Open champion reached his ninth consecutive final at the Wimbledon tune-up on Saturday with a 6-3, 7-6(4) victory over Kei Nishikori, improving his grass court record to 124-18 and reaching his 79th career final.

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Federer improves to a sparkling 45-5 at Halle in 12 appearances.

Facing the prospect of a third consecutive loss to Japan’s No. 1 player, Federer was focused from the onset. He claimed the first break of the match in the sixth game when he pressured Nishikori to extract a wide backhand.

In the next game Federer would use big serving to save a break point, as he hammered three consecutive service winners to wiggle out of a 30-40 situation.

Federer hit 10 aces and saved one of two break points faced, but more important the Swiss maestro was uncharacteristically efficient in his return game, breaking on his only two chances of the afternoon against Nishikori.

After closing out the opener, Federer would knock off a backhand volley to secure a break in the first game of the second set, but Nishikori answered in the following game, forcing a backhand error to level.

Neither player would yield on serve from that point.

In the second-set tiebreaker Federer jumped out to a 2-0 lead only to drop the next four points.

But back-to-back mini-breaks gave Federer a 5-4 lead as he took the balls with the match on his racquet. Federer closed the victory in 73 minutes as a Nishikori groundstroke trickled off the tape and fell harmlessly for an error.

Federer will bid for his 14th career grass-court title on Sunday when he faces Alejandro Falla of Columbia. Falla came back from a set down to defeat Philipp Kohlschreiber, 5-7, 7-6(5), 6-4.

The 30-year-old has yet to win an ATP title, but he did become the first man from his nation to reach a grass-court final and the fourth from his nation to reach multiple finals on the ATP tour.

Federer owns a 6-0 career edge against Falla which includes 3-0 on grass, but Falla did push Federer to five sets at Wimbledon in 2010. Federer came back from two sets down in that first-round match to win 5-7 4-6 6-4 7-6(1) 6-0.