A day after the tennis world was left in awe of the sublime Roger Federer, red hot Chilean Fernando Gonzalez set the stage for a mouth-watering Australian Open men's final with a performance arguably equal to that of the world number one as he blasted opponent Tommy Haas in straight sets 6-1, 6-3, 6-1.

Having seen off Lleyton Hewitt, James Blake and Raphael Nadal on his way to his maiden Grand Slam semi-final, Gonzalez, the tournament's tenth seed, showed no nerves against the experienced German who was attempting to progress past the semi-final stage in Melbourne for the first time at his third attempt.

Gonzalez mixed his bruising forehand that has worked to perfection in the past fortnight with equally brutal backhands and some superb deft touches. At times it seemed that everything Gonzalez touched turned to gold, so perfect was his timing that he managed to win match point seconds before Melbourne's Australia Day fireworks commenced. That, if nothing else, provided great TV pictures and saved the players the distraction of the loud sounds of exploding fireworks during play.

After a terrible start in which he lost the first 11 points of the match, Haas didn't play as badly as the scoreline suggests, throwing everything at his opponent, changing his tactics and trying to break up play by coming to the net but he simply had no answer to the big-hitting Chilean who is playing the tournament of his life. Incredibly, Gonzalez only committed three unforced errors in the entire match, all of those coming in the second set, and he hit 42 winners.

On serve, Gonzalez didn't even give Haas a sniff, not even a single break point opportunity in the entire match. Haas only won 13 points in total when receiving and was handed no free points as the South American didn't cough up a single double fault.

Gonzalez dominated on first serve, winning 87 percent and was also solid on his second serve with a 64 percent record. These figures beat both of Haas' serves, the German winning 63 percent of first serves but his second serve was a weakness as he only won seven of 27 points.