Federer, Roger

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Can Roger Federer Be Roger Federer Again?

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Roger Federer Be Roger Federer Again?He has 20 Grand Slam titles, but he is 39 and has not played competitively in more than a year. That changes this week in Qatar.When Roger Federer returned from a lengthy layoff in 2017 at age 35, he won the Australian Open right away. His current comeback is expected to be more about regaining his health than winning titles.Credit…AFPMarch 7, 2021, 3:12 p.m. ETIt is one of the great unknowns in tennis, but Roger Federer is finally back to help change that.This week — after more than a year away from the game — Federer will play his first competitive match since injuring his right knee and undergoing two operations in 2020.But will he ever again be the Roger Federer who defined his sport for so many years and won 20 Grand Slam singles titles, eight of them at Wimbledon? Will he still be the ethereal shotmaker, the merciless assassin disguised as the ultimate tennis gentleman, the master of playing tennis without seeming to break a sweat?Because of his history, no one has dared to answer those questions in the negative, not since he made it clear he would play competitively again in 2021.Federer, 39, will take the court this week in Doha at the Qatar Open and begin a phase of his career that he has never truly experienced: where every surprising loss — and there will be surprising losses — will generate questions about whether he should just call it a career.Federer asked for patience at a news conference on Sunday. He is still building, trying to become stronger, better, fitter, faster, with the goal of being at 100 percent by Wimbledon, which is set to begin on June 28.“Everything until then, it’s like let’s see how it goes,” he told dozens of journalists during one of those virtual news conferences that the world has become used to in the past year while he has been nursing his injuries. “Everything starts with the grass.”The tennis world may not share his patience. His every move will be picked apart for hints of whether he can make this comeback something other than a valedictory. In a sense, Federer is a victim of his success. In 2016, a torn meniscus in his left knee and a tweaked back sidelined him for six months. When he returned, at 35, in 2017, there was chatter he had passed his sell-by date.But the Federer who showed up after that layoff had new power and aggression, especially on his backhand, long a weakness that his rival Rafael Nadal took advantage of with his left-handed crosscourt forehands. Federer pushed closer to the baseline during points, pressuring opponents and attacking the net when he saw opportunities to end points quickly.He won the 2017 Australian Open in the first month of his comeback, finishing it by coming back from 3-1 down to Nadal in the fifth set to win, 6-3, in a remarkable display of grit and shotmaking under pressure. Then, in July 2017, he captured his eighth Wimbledon title without losing a set.“I’ve always been a guy who can play very little and play very well,” Federer said.After that comeback, the Federer legend grew even larger, especially among his staunchest competitors.“Roger makes you feel like you’re really bad at tennis,” Nick Kyrgios, an Australian, said of Federer last month at the Australian Open. “He walks around, he flicks his head, and I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing out here.”But will he be able to do that once more?Paul Annacone, who coached Federer to a Wimbledon title a decade ago as the player struggled to keep up with Nadal and a rising Novak Djokovic, said he had no doubt that Federer would again have great moments, even stretches of brilliance. The question is, will he be able to sustain them? Will he be able to maintain a high level of play through five matches of a regular tour event or seven matches at a Grand Slam tournament?Federer, pictured in 2019, has won men’s singles at Wimbledon eight times, the last time in 2017.Credit…Andrew Couldridge/ReutersAll pro tennis players can reach a sublime level for stretches, but over the course of a match or a tournament, players are generally only as good as their average level of play. So how good will Federer’s average be?“Historically, it’s been the older you are, the more challenging it is to get back what you have given up, in terms of time,” Annacone said in an interview last week. “But with the great players, you make predictions at your peril.”Annacone has a unique window into Federer’s moment. He also coached Pete Sampras in his twilight in the early 2000s, when Sampras’s ranking was sinking and every loss brought a new round of questions about retiring. Sampras won the 2002 U.S. Open, his 14th Grand Slam title but first in two years, and never played another match.The journey to that title, with those constant questions, was at times a brutal experience, one that Annacone said could sow doubt in the mind of even a great player like Federer.Andy Murray, a three-time Grand Slam event winner and former world No. 1, is going through it now as he tries to recapture his form after hip resurfacing. Murray, ranked No. 123, voiced his frustration last week after a top-tier win at the tournament in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.“I feel like I’m playing for my career now each time I step on the court, which is a motivation in some ways,” Murray said at a news conference after he beat Robin Haase of the Netherlands in three sets. “But it also adds a bit of extra stress.”How Federer manages that stress will go a long way toward determining whether this comeback is a farewell tour or a viable attempt to compete for the biggest championships, especially Wimbledon, where Federer has been at his best because he is so good on grass. He will play in Doha this week, and then perhaps in Dubai, but he has not committed to the spring clay-court season, which concludes with the French Open.Early on, it’s a good bet that he is going to make plenty of uncharacteristic errors. He will shank the occasional forehand, rim some backhands and struggle to nail his targets on his serve or when he fires at a sideline.“Expectations are really low, but I hope I can surprise myself,” Federer said.For him, this comeback was more about regaining his health than winning titles. Of course, he had conversations during the past year about whether embarking on this battle to recapture his old self at 39 was a fool’s errand. But, as he saw it, he needed a healthy knee anyway, so he could ski with his four children, cycle in the Alps and play basketball with his friends.And if he could do those things, then why not try to use that healthy knee to battle again on the tennis court against the best players at the biggest events.“The knee is going to dictate how long I can keep doing this,” he said. “I know it is more on the rare side for an almost-40-year-old to come back.”Like everyone else, he said, he is going to see what comes of the next five or six months. Then, in the fall, if he has played a significant number of matches, he will re-evaluate what comes next. For now, though, he is healthy and eager to take the court. He knows the initial results will not be his best, he said, but when he rises each morning he is full of hope.“I don’t feel like a broken man,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Novak Djokovic Wins Australian Open Final Over Daniil Medvedev

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka Wins TitleMen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNovak Djokovic Wins Third Straight Australian Open TitleThe victory for the top-ranked Djokovic, in three sets over the fourth-ranked Daniil Medvedev of Russia, gave him his 18th career Grand Slam title.Novak Djokovic of Serbia after his victory in the Australian Open men’s singles final against Daniil Medvedev of Russia.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 21, 2021Updated 9:26 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — They come nearly every year now, this new crop of challengers in men’s tennis who so desperately want to begin their time in the sun, to win the championships that everyone in the game values most and beat the three players considered the best to ever play on the biggest stage.And each year, they fall short, making the task seem even more impossible.This is how it went Sunday night at Melbourne Park, where Novak Djokovic did what he always does. Djokovic, the veteran from Serbia ranked No. 1 in the world, both defeated and discouraged the fourth-ranked Daniil Medvedev of Russia, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2, in the Australian Open men’s singles final.The victory gave Djokovic his ninth Australian Open singles championship, a tournament record on the men’s side, and the 18th Grand Slam title of his career. Djokovic has made nine Australian Open finals and won each time, including in the last three years.With this Grand Slam championship, Djokovic is now just two behind Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in the race to achieve the most major men’s singles titles in a career. Djokovic, 33, is a year younger than Nadal and six years younger than Federer, who will soon begin his comeback from two surgeries on his right knee, though it remains to be seen whether he will be a championship contender or embarking on a farewell tour.Grand Slam titles are the first measuring stick in any discussion of who is the greatest player of the modern and professional era of tennis, also known as the Open era, which began in 1968.The Big Three of men’s tennis, as they are known, have 58 now. Players under 30 years old have just one. The younger ones, like Medvedev, 25, who moments after the loss called Djokovic and his cohorts “cyborgs of tennis,” are all too familiar with the math.“When they are in the zone they are just better tennis players,” Medvedev said.Djokovic was in the zone Sunday night, playing what his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, called “a masterpiece.”It was a victory Djokovic needed badly, Ivanisevic said, after he was disqualified from the United States Open in September for swatting a ball that hit a line judge, and the drubbing Nadal gave him in the French Open final in October.“I have to agree with my coach,” Djokovic said of Ivanisevic’s assessment of the past few months. “I wanted to start this year in the best possible fashion.”His prospects did not look promising.Shortly after arriving in Australia, Djokovic became a public enemy when he requested special treatment for 72 players put on 14-day hard quarantines because 10 people on three chartered flights those players took to Australia tested positive for coronavirus upon arrival.Then came an injured abdominal muscle — doctors, he said, have told him it is torn — that nearly forced Djokovic out of the tournament. Yet he survived a five set test in the third round and a four-set challenge with two tiebreakers in the quarterfinals.He managed the abdominal injury better than he expected, then vanquished the hottest player in tennis. Medvedev had a 20-match winning streak heading into Sunday night.Attempting to place a little more pressure on his challenger, Djokovic called Medvedev “the man to beat” in the tournament. In reality though, few doubted Djokovic’s edge. He entered the match as the two-time reigning champion and with a well-earned aura of invincibility at Rod Laver Arena in the late rounds.Djokovic’s 18 Grand Slam singles titles place him two behind Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer’s career record in men’s tennis. Djokovic is the youngest of the three.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesRod Laver Arena sits a few hundred yards from the Yarra River, and just a few miles from Port Phillip Bay. When evening comes and the lights turn on, gulls flock to the rafters and squawk through the night. With Djokovic playing so many of his matches at night here, it becomes difficult not to imagine those birds as his personal vultures, bearing witness as he slays his latest victim.The reasons for Djokovic’s dominance here are both physical and psychological. The final always takes place at night. Those night matches that the birds come for, along with legions of Serbs who scream the “Olé, olé, olé, olé,” chant when their favorite son most needs it, are often played in cooler temperatures than those that take place during the warm, dry days of the Australian summer. Heat has always tended to melt Djokovic. A cool evening, like the one on which he met Medvedev, is his favorite playing partner.Also, players say the shift in the weather completely changes the conditions of the court. Balls stop popping off the ground, keeping so many of Djokovic’s hard, flat groundstrokes below his opponent’s knees and out of their strike zones. What looks like a simple backhand is anything but, especially when the player hitting the original shot has never lost the ultimate match here, and too often the opponent’s counter ends up wide, long or in the middle of the net.Medvedev made 67 errors, 30 of them unforced, though against Djokovic the difference between a forced error and an unforced one is negligible. Djokovic served just three aces, but he won 73 percent of the points on his first serve and 58 percent on his second serve, numbers that usually translate to a dominant night.Djokovic won seven of 11 break points and 16 of the 18 points when he came to the net. He outsmarted a player considered to be among the smartest and most creative in the game by keeping Medvedev guessing and setting the kinds of traps Medvedev has been known to lay for his opponents, hitting three shots to set up the winner on the fourth.Neither Djokovic, Federer nor Nadal have been beaten in a final to a player currently younger than 30.Dominic Thiem of Austria came close, outplaying Djokovic for long stretches in last year’s Australian Open final before Djokovic prevailed in five sets. That match appeared to hint at a shrinking gap between the veterans and the young players trying to nip at their heels.But as Djokovic lifted the trophy once more in Melbourne, he made it clear that he had no intention of giving up ownership of the crown he claims as his own and the court he calls his second backyard anytime soon.Djokovic said it was a matter of time before Medvedev and his peers started winning Grand Slams, but at the moment he is in a race against history and his two biggest rivals. It drives him, and there is no thought of slowing down.“I don’t feel like I am older or tired or anything like that,” he said.Daniil Medvedev broke his racket in frustration during the second set.Credit…Brandon Malone/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNor does he look it.Before Sunday’s match, Lleyton Hewitt, a former world No. 1 and a two-time Grand Slam champion in the 2000s, said Medvedev was going to need to create a moment to make himself believe that he could beat Djokovic on this night, on this court, like when Hewitt won the first-set tiebreaker against Pete Sampras in his first triumph at a Grand Slam final.The first test came early for Medvedev, after Djokovic broke him in his first service game and cruised to a 3-0 lead. But a game later, Medvedev outclassed Djokovic on a 28-shot rally that had both players sliding from sideline to sideline to get his first chance to break Djokovic’s serve. Minutes later it was 3-3. Game on.Five games later the set appeared headed for a tiebreaker, but the moment of truth for Medvedev arrived sooner. Serving at 5-6 and down a point, he sent a forehand wide with Djokovic pushing to the net, and caught a bad break as what could have been the winning shot on the next point ticked the top of the net cord and gave Djokovic a sitter for an easy passing shot.Just like that, triple set point. Big serves saved the first two, but then Medvedev sent a forehand into the net. The big hill that no one in Medvedev’s generation has been able to summit suddenly seemed that much higher.After prevailing in that first set, Djokovic shifted from a steady run into a sprint. He broke Medvedev three times in the second set and had him breaking one racket, swatting the ground with its replacement and shrugging his shoulders at his coach, as if to say there was nothing he could do.“Even if I would have done better, it doesn’t mean that the score would be different,” he said.On match point, Djokovic rose for a lob, stretched and whipped one last winner past Medvedev. He collapsed in celebration on the court then rose quickly, pumping his arms at his box and the crowd. By March, he will have spent more weeks holding the No. 1 ranking than any other man. The reign goes on, for Djokovic and for the Big Three.“Roger and Rafa inspire me,” Djokovic said as he sat next to the winner’s trophy. “That is something I have said before. I will say it again. I think as long as they go, I’ll go.”And then he just might go some more.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Tennis

      Andy Murray Tests Positive for Coronavirus

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAndy Murray’s Australian Open Said to Be in Doubt After Positive TestMurray reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus just before he was to leave for Melbourne, where strict quarantine rules await all players.Andy Murray in September at the French Open, where he lost in the first round.Credit…Charles Platiau/ReutersJan. 14, 2021, 9:02 a.m. ETAndy Murray has reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, putting his participation in next month’s Australian Open in doubt.Murray had been planning to fly to Melbourne this week to begin a two-week quarantine required by the tournament, which begins Feb. 8, three weeks later than usual because of the pandemic.Under rules agreed to by the tournament and Australia’s government, players, coaches and anyone else traveling to the event must return a negative virus test before departing. More testing — and strict rules about movement, housing and playing — await upon arrival.Murray, who was reported to be not showing any symptoms of Covid-19, was said to be hopeful he might still be able to play in the tournament.A three-time Grand Slam single champion, Murray, 33, has fallen to No. 123 in the world rankings after playing only a handful of matches in 2020 because of a pelvic injury. He received a wild card to this year’s Australian Open, where he is a five-time runner-up.The tournament has put in place strict rules to try to limit the spread of the virus as hundreds of players and their entourages, as well as news media members and other support staff, arrive in the country from around the world. Bubbles will be set up for everything from housing to training, and players and others will be subject to daily virus testing.During the 14-day quarantine period after they arrive in Australia, players will be able to leave their hotel rooms to work out for no more than five hours a day at a secure facility. The Victoria government said hundreds of staff members had been hired to attend to the needs of those in the quarantine hotels, and that the police would play a role in enforcing quarantine rules.Qualifying for the Australian Open has been taking place in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.Some players have simply stayed home. The American John Isner, ranked No. 25, said he would not play in the event because the quarantine measures would keep him away from his family for too long.No. 5 Roger Federer will also miss the event, citing knee problems. Most of the other top-ranked men’s players are still planning to attend.The American Tennys Sandgren, ranked No. 50, flew to Australia despite a recent positive test. He received special clearance after health officials determined that he was not infectious, because he showed no symptoms and had previously tested positive for the virus in November. “Some people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who are noninfectious can continue to shed the virus for several months,” the tournament said.After a spike in August, Australia has largely contained the virus through strict border closings lockdowns and other measures. The country is currently averaging about 20 new cases a day.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Tennis

      Roger Federer Will Skip the Australian Open

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKnee Problems Prompt Roger Federer to Skip the Australian OpenThe 20-time Grand Slam champion had two knee surgeries in 2020. He wants to come back, but it remains unclear when he will play.Roger Federer last played competitively during the 2020 Australian Open.Credit…Edgar Su/ReutersDec. 28, 2020, 2:40 p.m. ETAs organizers finalized plans to move the Australian Open to February from its usual January start, the top 100 men and women in the world rushed to sign up, yearning to play a Grand Slam in a country with few cases of the coronavirus, even if it meant a two-week quarantine upon arrival.Then, just days after signing on, Roger Federer announced Monday he would not play in Australia after all as he works his way back from knee surgeries.Federer hopes to play again, but will a return take the form of a farewell tour or a legitimate run at championships? Federer turns 40 in August.He has not played a competitive tournament since the 2020 Australian Open, where he made it through two five-set matches before falling to Novak Djokovic, the eight-time champion, in the semifinals. He also played a charity match in South Africa in February, but he announced early during the pandemic that he would shut down for the rest of the season as the sport itself was working out when it might return.As he recovered in Switzerland from his first knee surgery during the initial lockdown, Federer charmed fans by hitting in the snow outside his house. Then came his announcement that he’d had a second surgery in the spring, and he spoke of his slow recovery.“I’ve had two knee surgeries, so it has been dominated by that — by rehabbing, being on crutches, recovering from the surgery and taking it step by step. I must say I feel much better already again,” he said during a sponsor appearance last summer.As expected, he skipped the United States Open and the French Open. Tennis inched toward its next phase, as Dominic Thiem and Alexander Zverev battled in the U.S. Open final to become the first new men’s Grand Slam winner since 2014, with Thiem coming out on top. (Rafael Nadal skipped the tournament to avoid traveling to the U.S., and Djokovic was ejected for swatting a ball that hit a line judge.)Nadal tied Federer with his 20th Grand Slam at the French Open in October.Federer remained hopeful that he might be able to appear in Australia, especially after it became clear that the tournament would be pushed back three weeks to accommodate strict protocols for international travelers, including players.But in a statement to The Associated Press, Tony Godsick, Federer’s agent, said Federer had decided that despite recent progress, his best chance for success in whatever time he has left in professional tennis would be to return after the Australian Open.“I will start discussions this coming week for tournaments that begin in late February and then start to build a schedule for the rest of the year,” Godsick said.That could include plans for the Olympics, where Federer won a gold medal in doubles in 2008 and a silver in singles in 2012.In a statement, Craig Tiley, the Australian Open tournament director, said: “The Australian Open has always held a special place in his heart — remember it was Roger who first called the Australian Open the ‘happy slam’.”Federer is still the world No. 5. He last won the Australian Open in 2018 at 37. It is his most recent Grand Slam title. After he nearly won Wimbledon in 2019, it seemed as though he might be able to compete at the highest level for several more years.Now it is unclear when he might come back, much less contend against his longtime rivals, Djokovic and Nadal.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More