U.S. Open | Roger Federer's trophy collection grows

NEW YORK — As befits a cosmopolitan man of the world, Roger Federer owns homes all over: Oberwil, Switzerland; Wimbledon, England; Flushing Meadows.

Who would argue that Arthur Ashe Stadium does not belong to Federer in the aftermath of his fifth consecutive U.S. Open championship?

In a men's final that made up in historical appeal what it lacked in drama, Federer disposed of Andy Murray 6-2, 7-5, 6-2 Monday to become the first man to win five titles in a row at the U.S. Open and at Wimbledon.

Federer is the first man in the Open era to win the U.S. Open five consecutive years; Bill Tilden won the U.S. championships six times in a row in the 1920s.

It was Federer's 13th major championship. American Pete Sampras won 14 majors, more than any male, in his career.

"One thing's for sure," Federer said in an on-court interview. "I'm not going to stop at 13. That would be terrible."

Terribly unlucky, that is, which sums up the first eight months of Federer's 2008 season.

At the Australian Open, he lost in the semifinals while battling an illness that turned out to be mononucleosis. He lost in the final of the French Open and Wimbledon to a surging Rafael Nadal, who last month ended Federer's 4-½-year stay at No. 1 in the world.

For perhaps any other player, Federer's run in the Grand Slams would be called resplendent.

But because Federer had held the tennis world up like a 21st-century Atlas, people openly wondered what was wrong with him.

On Monday came the answer: Absolutely nothing.

Murray, a 21-year-old Briton, is No. 6 in the world and did not play badly. But he was no match for Federer, who produced 36 winners to Murray's 16.

"I felt great," Federer said. "I felt like I was invincible for a while again."

Murray, a Scot who is the same age Federer was when he won his first major, at Wimbledon in 2003, said: "Came up against, in my opinion, the best player ever to play. He definitely set the record straight today."

While Nadal emerged this year as Federer's toughest opponent on any surface, mononucleosis provided his stiffest challenge. The virus that causes the illness can tear through the body like a storm, with vestiges affecting the body for months. In 2007, Mario Ancic, a Croat who had cracked the top 10 at the end of 2006, contracted the illness, sat out six months to recover and saw his world ranking plummet to No. 85.

Federer, 27, dropped one spot, from No. 1 to No. 2, but his fall set off seismic shock waves in the sport because of his seeming invincibility the previous four years.

He left tennis for six weeks after losing to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open, a tournament he played believing his general malaise was the result of food poisoning. It was not until March that Federer found out his lingering fatigue was a function of much more than bad food, frequent travel or physical exertion.

Traveling to New York after winning a gold medal in doubles for Switzerland in Beijing, Federer experienced the Olympic hangover that dominated the conversation during the first week of the Open.

There was no rest for the weary. Federer's draw provided inviting targets for him to shoot for and ammo in the form of revenge. One by one, he picked off players who had beaten him earlier in the year.

In the third round, he prevailed in four sets against Radek Stepanek, who had upset him in Rome; in the semifinals, he knocked off Djokovic.

Murray's upset of Nadal in a semifinal gave Federer one more chance to avenge a loss.

Returning to the ATP circuit in Dubai in March after his doctor-mandated layoff, Federer lost to Murray in the first round 6-7 (6-8), 6-3, 6-4. Afterward, Federer dismissed Murray's game. He said it had not changed much since they first squared off in 2005, and that Murray was "going to have to grind very hard for the next few years" if he persisted in hanging back and waiting for his opponent to make a mistake rather than attack.

Federer was criticized at the time for a rare affront against an opponent. And yet on Monday, Federer's earlier assessment of Murray's game read like a match summation. Murray came to the net 11 times, compared with Federer's 44.

Murray's feet were rooted several feet behind the baseline for much of the 1-hour, 51-minute contest.

Note

• Serena Williams' victory over Jelena Jankovic on Sunday in the women's final, postponed from Saturday because of rain, earned a 4.3 overnight rating, a 65 percent increase from the 2007 final when Justine Henin beat Svetlana Kuznetsova.