Roger Federer has won his 100th ATP Tour title at the Dubai Tennis Championships – 6,600 days after winning his first in Milan.

The 37-year-old Swiss – a 20-time Grand Slam champion – beat Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4 6-4.

Federer’s first ATP title came at the Milan Indoors on 4 February, 2001, when he beat Frenchman Julien Boutter.

“It is an absolute dream come true right now,” said Federer, who will become world number four on Monday.

He is just the second man, after American Jimmy Connors in 1983, to reach the landmark.

“I’m delighted. It’s great to win my eighth here in Dubai and in combination with my 100th singles title,” he added.

“To win in Marseille and then come here was difficult for Stefanos.

“I don’t know if Stefanos was born when I won my first title (he was, in August 1998). It’s a privilege [to play against possible future champions] because I’ll be watching them on the TV. It was a treat to play Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. I’m sure Stefanos will have a wonderful career.

“Tennis is in good hands regardless if I’m there or not.”

• Roger Federer’s 100 titles in numbers
• Can you name the 20 players to have beaten Federer in a final?

Federer broke Tsitsipas, 20, in the first game of the match before saving two break points at 5-4 to see out the first set.

The Greek – who will break into the world top 10 for the first time on Monday – held his nerve in the second set until 4-4, before Federer broke his serve once again to wrap up the final in 69 minutes.

World number 11 Tsitsipas was Federer’s 50th different final opponent and the 25th different nationality.

It was only the second time the pair had met, with Tsitsipas beating Federer in four sets in the Australian Open last 16 in January.

Federer will have to win 10 more titles to beat Connors’ men’s record of 109, while Martina Navratilova holds the all-time record having won 167 women’s singles crowns during her career.

Analysis

BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller

Jimmy Connors’ record remains a remarkable one.

He won his 109th and final tournament in Tel Aviv in the month after turning 37, and that was over six years before he finally called it a day.

Connors won 15 titles – including the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open – in his standout season of 1974. Nothing that Federer achieves should remotely diminish Connors’ feat, although the Swiss is playing in what the Grand Slam roll of honour shows to be the finest era in men’s tennis.

Is there any way Federer can catch Connors? Probably not, given his age, as he would need to maintain his recent strike rate for another couple of seasons.

If overtaking Connors’ record was paramount, Federer could target the smaller, less competitive, events. But this would come at the expense of the Grand Slams, which remain Federer’s overriding motivation.

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Roger Federer has won a remarkable 100 career singles titles.

Victory in Dubai on Sunday meant he became only the second man to achieve the feat – after American Jimmy Connors, 35 years ago.

But can you name the players who have prevented the Swiss from increasing his tally?

Twenty players have beaten Federer in the men’s singles final of a tournament. How many can you name in four minutes?

Roger Federer sealed his 100th career singles title with victory at the Dubai Tennis Championship on Saturday.

He is just the second man – after American Jimmy Connors – to reach the landmark, and the first for 35 years.

Federer’s titles have come across 19 years, on all the sport’s surfaces, in 30 cities and 19 countries.

BBC Sport takes a look at the 37-year-old Swiss’ remarkable century.

A global champion

Federer’s first title came on 4 February 2001, when he beat Julien Boutter to win the Milan Indoors as a 19-year-old.

The match report on the BBC Sport website described Federer as “one of the up-and-coming stars on the men’s tennis scene”, and the Swiss spoke of his “high but not impossible” aim of breaking into the world’s top 15.

The 99 titles he has won since have come at another 30 events and on four continents.

His most successful tournaments are his hometown event in Basel and the grass-court event in Halle, Germany, both of which he has won nine times.

Wimbledon is his most successful Grand Slam with eight titles. He has won the Australian Open six times, the US Open five times and the French Open once.

Fifty of Federer’s titles have come in Europe, 24 in North America, 18 in Asia and eight in Australia.

Federer’s 100 titles at a glance

• 30 cities
• 548 matches
• 83,302 points
• 46,508 points won
• 4,378 aces
• 52,152 minutes on court

How the greats compare

Saturday’s victory in Dubai moves Federer one closer to Connors’ record of 109 titles, won between 1972 and 1989.

It also edges him further ahead of Ivan Lendl, Rafael Nadal and John McEnroe, who are third, fourth and fifth respectively on the all-time list.

Fifteen-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic has won 73 titles, while Britain’s Andy Murray is 14th with 45.

Twenty of Federer’s 100 titles have come in the Grand Slams, an all-time record.

The Swiss may have won fewer titles than Connors but he has won 12 more Grand Slams than the American, and three more than Nadal, who is the second most successful player in Slams.

Six of Federer’s titles have come at the ATP Finals, the tournament held at the end of the season between the best eight players in a calendar year. Again, that is a record; Djokovic, Lendl and Pete Sampras have won the event five times.

The remainder of Federer’s titles have come in the regular ATP season, which is split into three tiers – the highest-ranked being the ATP Masters 1,000, followed by the ATP 500 series and the ATP 250 series.

Federer has won 27 Masters 1,000 titles – six fewer than record-holder Nadal and five fewer than Djokovic – plus a record 22 ATP 500 titles, and 25 ATP 250 titles.

The famous rivalry

Federer has beaten 50 players in the finals of professional singles tournaments.

His most frequent victim is the player he has faced the most times – Nadal. The pair have met 24 times in finals, with Federer winning 10 and Nadal 14. That is a similar win ratio to all matches between the pair – Nadal leads their head-to-head 23-15.

That said, Federer has beaten Nadal in their past five meetings, including their past four finals.

Andy Roddick is Federer’s next most frequent final victim, having lost to the Swiss seven times in finals. Novak Djokovic is next on six, followed by Murray on five and Ivan Ljubicic on four.

Roddick can at least take some pride from knowing he has pushed Federer harder than any other player in the Swiss’ 100 winning finals.

Their meeting at Wimbledon in 2009 lasted four hours 16 minutes, Federer’s longest successful final and 202 minutes longer than his shortest – a 52-minute dispatching of Belgium’s David Goffin in 2014 in Basel.

Federer has spent 52,152 minutes on court during his 100 title wins. That’s 869 hours – just over 36 days. It’s enough time to watch the full series of eight Harry Potter films from start to finish 44 times.

A career of winning

Federer’s most successful year was 2006, when he won 12 titles including three Grand Slams – the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open – plus the season-ending ATP finals, then known as the Tennis Masters Cup. He had won 11 tournaments in each of the two previous seasons, in a remarkable period of domination, winning 24 consecutive finals between 2003 and 2005.

Though he has not reached such heights since – in part because of the emergence of Djokovic and Nadal – he has still achieved impressive consistency.

The 2016 season was the only one in the 17 since he won his first title in which he did not secure a tournament victory – ending his year early because of injury.

After a six-month break he returned in 2017 to win seven titles – his best season for 10 years – including becoming the oldest man to win Wimbledon in the Open era.

Federer first became world number one in 2004, and in the 14 years since has topped the rankings for a record 310 weeks across six spells.

At home on grass and hard courts too

Federer’s prowess at Wimbledon, and on grass courts in general, is no secret.

He has won 18 of his 100 titles on the surface, despite the grass-court season taking up such a small proportion of the tennis calendar.

His eight wins at Wimbledon, nine at Halle and one at Stuttgart mean he has won eight more grass-court tournaments than any other player in history.

But Federer’s record on hard courts is often underappreciated.

Hard-court tournaments are the most common in the modern game, but his haul of 69 titles on the surface is 13 more than second-placed Djokovic on the all-time list.

It is only on clay courts that Federer has found it relatively difficult to win titles.

He has won 11 times on clay, the 26th-best total. That has come in an era during which Federer has been competing against Nadal, the greatest clay-court player of all-time and winner of 57 titles on the surface.

And he could have had even more

Federer has been in 52 finals in addition to the 100 he has won. He has lost 25 of those in a deciding set.

The most famous of those came against Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final, which lasted four hours 48 minutes.

Nadal has beaten Federer the most times in finals, with 14 victories. Djokovic is next with 13, followed by Juan Martin del Potro with four and Murray with three.

Federer has lost to 20 players in finals – but how many can you name in four minutes? Have a go in our quiz below.

Analysis

BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller

Jimmy Connors’ record remains a remarkable one.

He won his 109th and final tournament in Tel Aviv in the month after turning 37, and that was over six years before he finally called it a day.

Connors won 15 titles – including the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open – in his standout season of 1974. Nothing that Federer achieves should remotely diminish Connors’ feat, although the Swiss is playing in what the Grand Slam roll of honour shows to be the finest era in men’s tennis.

Is there any way Federer can catch Connors? Probably not, given his age, as he would need to maintain his recent strike rate for another couple of seasons.

If overtaking Connors’ record was paramount, Federer could target the smaller, less competitive, events. But this would come at the expense of the Grand Slams, which remain Federer’s overriding motivation.

Additional statistics provided by ATP Tour.