RF Tennis News 2018

Photo: Ben Solomon


Author: Alix Ramsay  | 20 January 2018


It is that stage in the tournament, the bit where the favourites emerge from the pack and announce their intentions.

The first week is always entertaining for the fans – everyone is on show and there is plenty to see – and educational for the players. As they ease themselves up to full speed, they can make a few minor tweaks to their game, and they can run an experienced eye over the opposition. Who is looking sharp? Who is carrying an injury? Who is looking edgy?

But then there is Roger Federer. The man who stubbornly refused to class himself as a favourite a matter of days ago (he reckoned he was far too old at 36 to be thought of as a champion elect) may be talking that talk, but he is certainly not walking that walk. Yet again, he breezed through his evening gig at Rod Laver Arena, this time removing Richard Gasquet from his path 6-2 7-5 6-4 on Saturday night.

“I think I was able to stay a little bit more on the offensive than him,” Federer said with perfect understatement.

“Maybe I protected my own serve a little bit better than him. Richard played well – and me too. I’m happy to win tonight.”

As the rounds go by, so the opponents get better and harder to beat. But the Mighty Fed does not seem to care. He is the master of game management, conserving his energies for the key moments in the match. So it was that he let Gasquet do his thing – lovely backhand, trying to take the fight to Federer – while the defending champion looked after his serve and waited for his moment to pounce.

Federer has that happy knack of making tennis look so easy. There is no sweat or grind with the world No.2, and there are no fancy-pants tactics. He simply, cleanly and regularly puts the ball where his opponent cannot reach it. As game plans go, it is hardly complicated, but no one does it quite like Federer.

For most of the first set, the Swiss maestro looked at Gasquet’s one-handed backhand (a shot of style and beauty) and took it on. “Call that a one-handed backhand, Richard? Take a look at this!” If Gasquet thought the shot would be a real weapon, Federer disabused him of the notion, disarming it time and again.
When Gasquet upped the ante in the second set, playing considerably better and not conceding a break point for the best part of 45 minutes, Federer did not look flustered. He has won 19 Grand Slam titles in his time; taking on the world No.31, a man he has beaten 16 times in 18 meetings (Gasquet has not taken a set from the Swiss in seven years), Fed knew he did not need to worry. No, he knew he would get his chance eventually.

That moment came as the Frenchman went to serve for the set. And for all his hard work to challenge the champion in the previous 11 games, it mattered not one jot as Federer welted a couple of winners and got his reward for the pressure as Gasquet made the errors.

Come the third set, Gasquet’s spirit had been broken. He had done all he could and he was still two sets down. Now what? As he pondered the problem, Federer skipped to a 3-0 lead. Gasquet was dripping with sweat; Federer was not even out of breath (hence the old saying: Horses sweat, gentlemen perspire, but Roger merely glows). They had been on court for 90 minutes and Gasquet had not had so much as a sniff of a break point to work with.



That was about to change – even Federer is human – as the finishing line came into view. Out of nowhere, Gasquet managed to break serve. He was still 3-4 behind, mind you, but he had broken serve. But before anyone had time to put out the bunting and balloons, Federer broke back. Unfortunately for Gasquet, he was serving to stay in the match at the time.

Comparing the match statistics, there did not seem to be much in it. Gasquet had 27 winners to 16 errors; Federer had 42 winner to 30 errors. They are very respectable sets of figures, but actually on the match court, Federer was making mincemeat of his old rival.

After almost two hours, Federer was safely through to the last 16 there to face Marton Fucsovics, the world No.80 from Hungary. And still he says he isn’t the favourite for the title. It seems that not even Federer can get everything right.

Photo: Ben Solomon


Author: Alix Ramsay  | 22 January 2018


No matter what the weather, no matter what the time, nothing can ruffle Roger Federer’s feathers. Marton Fucsovics tried – oh, how he tried – but the good ship Federer sailed serenely on to the quarterfinals 6-4 7-6(3) 6-2. As a result, he was a very jolly Roger.

“I thought he played very well,” Fed said. “In tough conditions, you have to have quick ideas and execute very well and I think he did that well. It’s not easy being down two sets to none, and he started making some mistakes eventually. But I thought he was playing really clean, solid, bit of everything: serving, volleying, chipping – it was nice to see.







“I had a hard time really breaking through until I was two sets to love and a break. That’s when I really started to feel, OK now I’ve got the wind behind my back. I can cruise to victory. But until then it was tough.”

Fucsovics has had plenty to celebrate of late. For a start, he got engaged during the off-season (he popped the question to the future Mrs Fucsovics while on holiday in the Maldives). Then there was the fact that he was in the fourth round – he had never won three consecutive matches on the main tour in his life before. Things were going well.

Then there was his second round win over world No.13 Sam Querrey. That was the best win of his career. He had never beaten such a highly ranked player before and he had done it in the 39°C heat. Better still, all of this had been achieved on his Australian Open debut. The nearest he came to the main draw last year was losing in the first round of qualifying event to Bradley Mousley who, with all due respect to Mr Mousley, is barely a household name in his own household.
 
Yes, there was plenty to celebrate all right. And his reward for all this endeavour? A ticket to a fourth-round pasting from Roger Federer. Somehow, it did not seem fair.

Rodge is not fussy when he plays but he does like routine. If he starts playing at night, he wants to keep playing at night. What he does not want is a late night followed by an early morning and even if 3pm does not sound particularly early, it was more than early enough for a 36-year-old who was used to getting bed in the early hours after a hard night’s work.
 
“I just set the alarm at a different time,” Federer said. “Just try to get to bed at some stage because playing at night, going to bed at 3am, is a different rhythm to playing in the daytime and that’s always the tricky part.”



Perhaps that was why Fed did not look quite the unstoppable, untouchable, unbelievable maestro we have become used to. He was still very, very good, mind you. Far too good for Fucsovics, that was for sure, but if he wanted to split hairs, there were a few things that could be worked on, a tweak here or there.
 
There were those 28 unforced errors. Tsk, tsk. There were the seven break points he let dribble off his racquet strings. Tut, tut. But in between there was the usual Roger magic and there was no way Fucsovics was going to stop the champion getting through to the last eight and an appointment with Tomas Berdych.

How the Aussie Open lifted legendary status of Federer, Serena



From the moment he started his career, Roger Federer embraced the Australian Open. Jason Heidrich/Icon Sportswire


Peter Bodo, ESPN
Jan 8, 2018


The evolution of the Australian Open can be considered one of the most compelling "worst to first" tales in sports, even though it has nothing to do with teams, coaches or win-loss records.

A Grand Slam in name only as late as 1987, the tournament (it begins Sunday, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2 in Melbourne Park) has set the gold standard for tennis promotions. The venue has three roofed stadiums, beautiful open-air secondary courts and numerous crossover attractions, from kid-friendly zones to the AO Live Stage music venue.

Put plainly, the other three majors have been playing catch-up.

Once shunned by the top stars, the tournament is now beloved by the elites. Here's how Roger Federer put it in his postmatch press conference after winning last year:

"This is a tournament I've not missed," he said. "This is the one I guess that is my most consistent Slam potentially. It all started for me here. I played the qualies here in '99, the juniors in '98. Won my first match maybe against Michael Chang here back in 2000. I go way back. Always loved coming here."

The transformation of the Australian Open from a moribund event played on grass in the confines of a fusty old tennis club (Kooyong) into the model major happened in one great leap in 1987. That's when the tournament, aided by a date change from late December to early January, moved into Melbourne Park. It soon began to alter the arc of tennis history.

At that time and into the early 1990s, Roy Emerson's record of 11 Grand Slam singles titles still seemed unbeatable. Elite players had grown accustomed to a three-Slam game. The poor conditions at Kooyong and the holiday-season time slot gradually drove away stars once they started making enough money to skip the event.

"[The tournament] wasn't like a major, and the players didn't think of it as one," said ESPN analyst Brad Gilbert, who played at Kooyong a few times. "The grass was goofy. You dropped the ball and it didn't even reach your calf on the bounce. The club was crowded. If you were playing on the field courts, you were right on top of the guy playing next to you. It was nothing like Wimbledon or the US Open."

Bjorn Borg, who retired with 11 majors, played in Melbourne just once. Jimmy Connors, who won eight majors, played the US Open 21 times and the Down Under Slam just twice (he did win a title there). John McEnroe played the Australian Open just once during the period when he had his best chance to win it.

But that has not been the case for this generation of stars. Novak Djokovic has won the Aussie six times -- which accounts for half of his Slam total. The tournament launched Djokovic's tenure in the big time when he bagged his first major in Melbourne, in 2008. He failed to win another major in 11 tries but entered his most prolific period with another title Down Under three years later.

Serena Williams owns seven Aussie titles. Even though she withdrew this season, without that event as a staple in her schedule, she wouldn't be vying for the all-time singles Grand Slam record.

Federer isn't far down on the beneficiary list. He's been most successful at Wimbledon (eight major titles), but he's won the same number of titles in Australia (five) as at the US Open.

The hard courts in Melbourne Park have also played a significant role in the rivalry between Federer and Rafael Nadal. While Nadal has contended at almost every Australian Open he's entered, he's won just once in four finals. It helps explain why he's still No. 2 to Federer in the all-time singles title derby, trailing 19-16.

The other Hall of Fame players who benefited greatly when the Australian Open became important again were Andre Agassi and Jim Courier, who like Djokovic won half their majors Down Under.

The Australian Open has done more for the game than enriching the top players. The move to January transformed the tennis calendar, leading to an enormous expansion of the game and its popularity.

Tennis is still largely seen as an outdoor, summer enterprise, with Wimbledon and the US Open generating the greatest amount of media buzz. But the Australian Open now launches the tennis year with a great big bang. It's a critical advantage for tennis, because for most fans in this sports-glutted age, tennis is still all about the Grand Slams.

Now the first Grand Slam champions of the new year are crowned, with an appropriate degree of fanfare, in late January, not early June. The game is off and running, and that helps give momentum to the two big outdoor hard-court events played a little over a month after the conclusion of the AO, Indian Wells and Miami. Federer expressed his awareness and appreciation of that history last year. After the final, he spoke about how happy he was to mount his epic comeback in Melbourne, citing two of his former Aussie coaches -- and a lot of other folks -- as cherished influences and motivators.

"I'm so thankful to Peter Carter and Tony Roche, and [also] just [the Australian] people," he said. "I guess my popularity here, their support, [helped me show] that I can still do it at my age after not having won a Slam for almost five years."

We've come a long way from the days when droves of European and American stars skipped the onetime December event in order to be home for the holidays.

As Federer pointed out, "When you win down here, the journey home is not a problem. When you lose, it's just brutal."

The travel time hasn't changed, but these days all the top players are willing to make the journey because the reward for winning is well worth it.