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.

If you didn't already know, Aussie Open finalist
Roger Federer is a superhero



Jerry Bembry - ESPN

26 January 2018

MELBOURNE, Australia -- On the day before the start of the 2018 Australian Open, Roger Federer reached out to his 11.3 million Twitter followers with one of his random Photoshop requests. Make me "a superhero" is what he asked, and some of the responses -- including Federer as Superman -- were somewhat predictable.

But as 21-year-old Hyeon Chung retired in the second Friday set after being overpowered by Federer throughout their brief match, there's one superhero who comes to mind for the best men's tennis player in history.

Iron Man.

Remember how the public and media went crazy celebrating the fact that Cal Ripken Jr. played 2,632 straight baseball games until ending the streak in 1998?

Even Ripken would have to bow down to Federer who, after watching an opponent 15 years his junior beg out of the biggest match of his life because of a blister, won 6-1, 5-2 and will face No. 6 seed Marin Cilic in Sunday's final.

Make that another win for Federer, who has not lost to a player ranked as low as the No. 58 Chung at a Grand Slam since falling to 116th-ranked Sergiy Stakhovsky in the second round of Wimbledon in 2013.

So, in the 1,338 matches Federer has played since turning pro in 1998, he has completed every single one.

Just think about how amazing that is, playing a sport in which he is constantly lunging and sprinting. Playing through ankle tweaks and muscle aches and bad backs. Pushing his body through intense heat and tough opponents.

Federer has not only survived, but he's thrived to maintain his status as one of the top players in tennis today.

He's the guy people showed up to see Friday, people paying top dollar in anticipation of a match against an up-and-coming talent in Chung. Earlier in the tournament, the South Korean took out Novak Djokovic. So, yes, this was one of those true enthralling generational battles.

But fans didn't get to see Federer for too long. The crowd at Rod Laver Arena let out an audible gasp after Chung approached the chair umpire and waved his hand, signaling he was done.

There was brief disappointment, but that dissipated quickly as most stood and applauded Federer, who will play for his second straight Australian Open championship -- and 20th Grand Slam title -- on Sunday.


Roger Federer has never, ever retired in his 1,388 matches on tour. EPA/LUKAS COCH

Federer's not the quickest guy on tour. He's never been the fastest and definitely not the most buff (did you see the guns on display by Rafael Nadal last week before he retired?).

In terms of being physically fit? Yes, Federer has had his ailments. And, yes, he withdraws from the occasional tournament.

But when he shows up, he finishes what he starts. His ability to play an entire career without ever quitting is one of the most remarkable feats in all of sports.

So, he's due an occasional easy night, and Federer certainly wasn't apologizing for Friday's brief match.

"You do take the faster matches when you can because there's enough wear and tear on the body," Federer said. "There's enough tough matches throughout the season that when they happen, you take them."

Remember the Federer who came into last year's Australian Open? He was badly banged up, hadn't played a tournament in six months. He told reporters then that he would have been happy to reach the fourth round.

But his old-man knees carried him to an exciting five-set win over his biggest rival, Nadal, in the final as he became the oldest man to win a Grand Slam singles title in 45 years.

After his match against Chung, Federer turned center court into somewhat of a confessional. He told the crowd that he went into last year thinking he "would have been happy to win one more major."

He won the 2017 Australian Open.

He won Wimbledon as well.

And now he's starting the new year with a chance to win the 2018 Australian Open, and in not dropping a single set, he hasn't shown any signs of slippage.

"In terms of tennis, I think I see things a bit different," Federer said. "A bit more wiser to some extent, maybe more laid-back."


Roger Federer beat Marin Cilic in straight sets to win Wimbledon last year. PAUL CROCK/AFP/Getty

Here's how he's become wiser: Federer said he battled mono when he fell to Djokovic in the 2008 Australian Open semifinals. He would later say he would have been smart to have not played the event and allowed his body to rest and heal.

The older, more rational Federer would have sat that one out. He's cut back on the number of tournaments he plays. Last year, he competed in only 12 and had one of the best seasons of his career in winning seven of those events. That selective process has allowed him to excel when he gets on the grand stage at majors.

"I never thought I was going to play a bit of a lesser schedule, which actually is quite enjoyable," he admitted. "I always thought, 'I'm just going to keep playing from January to November every single year -- 20-something tournaments.' But I was able to adapt to that.

"Maybe that's also one of the reasons why I'm still here."

Even if Chung had stayed healthy, it appeared Federer would have easily survived. The only lowlight for Federer came late in the first set when he completely whiffed on a forehand from the baseline. But he won 94 percent of his first-serve points, won all seven of his service games and breezed into the final.

Unless you're 40-year-old Tom Brady, old athletes just don't have the level of athletic success that Federer is enjoying.

Will Federer be playing into his 40s?

That's probably doubtful.

But at the moment, at 36, he appears incredibly sharp.

The 14-year, 284-day age difference between Federer and Chung was the fourth largest in any Grand Slam semifinal in the Open era. In the previous three, the young guy prevailed each time.

Not so Friday night. Chung never had a chance.

Mere mortals simply don't beat superheroes.

Marin Cilic could smother Roger Federer in Aussie Open final, but will he?


Peter Bodo - ESPN

27 January 2018 - 10:23 AM ET

The last time Marin Cilic was in a Grand Slam singles final, things turned sour pretty quickly and only got worse. That was at Wimbledon barely seven months ago, and against the same opponent he will face in the Australian Open final Sunday: Roger Federer.

But the encouraging detail for Cilic, the 29-year-old Croatian with the bruising serve, is that his woes last July weren't the handiwork of his brilliant opponent.

Cilic appeared to be in the grip of an anxiety attack that day on Centre Court when he fell behind by a set and a break. He was unable to hide the tears that trickled down his cheeks. Later, it would become clear that the source of his trouble was a painful blister that had burst on the bottom of his right foot.

It was nothing less than humiliating. How could Cilic be expected to perform in his condition against Federer, with the entire world watching? He wept, and Federer slashed his way to an easy straight-sets win.


Marin Cilic's emotions got the better of him during the 2017 Wimbledon final against Roger Federer. DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images


Now Cilic gets a do-over. Curiously, he has avoided almost all discussion of that painful episode at Wimbledon.

"I'm not looking at it as a revenge," Cilic said after he blasted through Kyle Edmund in a bare-knuckle semifinal brawl. "It was on me that I couldn't give my best in Wimbledon."

In Cilic's eyes, that Wimbledon match was a counterbalance to his unexpected, if thoroughly earned, win at the 2014 US Open final, his only Grand Slam singles win to date.

"I had one amazing experience in a final, and one not so amazing," Cilic said. "So I had both emotionally great and not great."

If the No. 6 seed hopes to have another great emotional experience, he will have to bring all of the aggression and intensity he can muster to bear on Federer. That means his nail-gun serve, backed by the atomic forehand. It means his crushing service return followed by a down-the-line backhand pass.

Cilic can do those things, which is partly why being unable to even attempt them at Wimbledon was so devastating. It's also why Federer feels it's imperative to get off to a good start in the final.

"I hope I can mix up my game," Federer said, after his abbreviated win over Hyeon Chung in the semifinals. "I hope I can start serving well from the get-go, not get into too much trouble early. I hope I can read his serve and all these things."

Cilic is 6-foot-6 with lean, tensile muscle. The engine driving his game is a serve that has produced 107 aces so far, and it's backed by a ferocious backhand. Cilic is one of the few players who has the capacity to smother Federer, to keep his genie bottled up.

Federer leads the series, 6-1, but Cilic's lone win came at a crucial time: the semifinals of the 2014 US Open before going on to beat Kei Nishikori for the title. Just why Cilic wasn't able to get back to another major final until last summer is an intriguing question.

Cilic seems humble, which is why fans embrace him. But his career has had some strong fluctuations, as if he struggles with motivation or, more likely for an essentially shy person, confidence. The one certain thing is that when his morale is high, he's a handful for anyone.

The first Croatian to play in an Australian Open final also seems to benefit from frequent coaching changes. And while he's a nice guy, he makes those changes dispassionately. He was shaped by Bob Brett, one of the least heralded but most influential coaches of this era. But it was Goran Ivanisevic, himself a former Brett protege and fellow Croatian, who shepherded Cilic to the Promised Land of a Grand Slam title.

Cilic cut Ivanisevic loose during his slump year of 2016, but he kept that carbon copy of the service motion that Ivanisevic once terrorized Wimbledon opponents with. Cilic then worked with Jonas Bjorkman for about 18 months before hooking up with his present coach, Ivan Cinkus. This is a player who knows what he wants.

This winter, Federer and Cilic unexpectedly found themselves at the same swank resort in the Maldives. Cilic reached out, and the two men had a friendly hit without anybody else around, then got together with Federer's family and Cilic's fiancee for dessert. They got to know each other a little better, but perhaps they were heeding that old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."


(Edit: My addition - not part of the original article)



Federer was impressed with Cilic in their last meeting, at the ATP World Tour Finals. Cilic had already lost two round-robin matches, yet he came out breathing fire. He took the game to Federer and played him very close for two sets before faltering in the third.

"The way he came out against me was very much a winner's attitude," Federer remembered. "I didn't feel I was facing a guy who just lost two round-robin matches."

Similarly, Federer was impressed by the way Cilic kept his composure after a rocky start the other day against Nadal in Melbourne.

Nobody reads an opponent's game, or emotional state, as well as Federer. Cilic won't take him by surprise, which removes one potential weapon from the unexpected finalist's arsenal. But there are lots of other dangerous ones for Federer to ponder.

Cilic seizes second chance to climb Swiss mountain


Timothy Boyle - THE AGE  

January 27 2018


Even if you don't want everything in men's tennis to be about Roger Federer, he makes sure that it is.

His career keeps renewing itself in the face of passing time and what ought to be exhaustion. At 36, he's like Santiago's marlin now, attached to his inevitable end and yet still pulling line into the fathoms of tennis history, making everyone wonder just how deep he will go, and for how long.



Roger Federer remains at the centre of men's tennis. Photo: AAP
 

About ten years ago, when Marat Safin retired from professional tennis, the best four players were the same best four players in the game today. Until Stan Wawrinka broke the spell, and won his second grand slam at the French Open in 2015, Safin was the last player outside of the "big four" to win more than one major title in his career.

And in the 13 years since Safin won his second title – the 2005 Australian Open – a total of three players outside the four have won a grand slam. One of them is Stan. Both of the other two beat Roger Federer in the tournament they eventually won. Both are right-handers who hit double-handed backhands, both won on hard courts, and both are 198cm tall and were born in September of 1988. The first is Juan Martin del Potro. The second is Marin Cilic. (Edit: Amazing coincidence!   )



Marat Safin battled superstars throughout his career.
Photo: Sebastian Costanzo
 

It's a little bottle of hope for Cilic, bobbing in an ocean of suggestive statistics dominated by Federer. But perhaps it contains a clue about how it is possible to beat Roger Federer in a major if you are not Nadal or Djokovic. It's best to be tall, hit the ball extremely hard, serve flawlessly and do it without faltering through five sets.


But even a glimmer of hope, or a statistical anomaly, has to face the dynamic pressure of Federer's game, which, even now, seems to be tightening its grip on tennis. And while Cilic can take some swagger into this match, knowing he's beaten Federer at a grand slam before, he also knows that he has lost the other 8 of the 9 matches they have played. It's unlikely that he'll ever forget his loss to Federer at Wimbledon last year.

Cilic suffered foot pain in that match that was, coincidentally, the same type of pain Hyeon Chung succumbed to against Federer on Friday night. The foot, combined with his deep-seated desire to win and Federer's skill, conspired to have Cilic crying into a towel on centre court.

It was an unusual, human moment that appeared at the top of a giant corporate stack ruled by Federer, a man who shows next to no emotion on the tennis court. It was another example of how demoralising Federer's aggressive stroke-play can be to any player having problems with mobility.



The shadow of Federer looms large for Marin Cilic during last year's Wimbledon final. Photo: AP


Federer has a keen sense of his opponent's weaknesses, and it makes him a close to unplayable front-runner.

If you have paid attention to his play and demeanour during this tournament, it's hard not to notice this predatory streak in Federer. Now and then, he will offer a look, or a line in a press conference, that speaks to his position at the head of the game.

He knows so much about tennis, and about his own power to play it, that he is confident to pass judgment on other players when asked his opinion. And when asked about Marin Cilic's game on Friday, he offered a subtle appraisal of Cilic's chances.

"I think him winning the US Open, like Stan winning here a few years ago, gave them great belief that they can do it," Federer said.


“Federer understands that he is different to other players, and he's not afraid to acknowledge it.”



"If the big moments come about, they can attain this level – not easily, but they can get there from time to time."

There was nothing unfriendly about it, but it was sober, and, you felt, true. Federer understands that he is different to other players, and he's not afraid to acknowledge it. He certainly understands that Marin Cilic will have to do something extraordinary to beat him here.

Cilic took a set from Federer in their last outing, an indoor tournament in London last November that Federer won in three sets, the third set 6-1. Cilic does have the game to upset Federer's rhythm, and he's in the ball-striking form to do it.

"I played great tennis, very, very high level," Cilic said of his Open so far. "I'm feeling really good physically. I've improved my level. I'm playing much more aggressive.

"Everything is in a good, solid spot. I think over all I'm playing better, and more consistent."

It's likely that all that positivity and consistency will have to align for Cilic to take the trophy. Not least because Federer's feet, unlike his opponents', remain a miraculous fixture, maybe the most splendid things to watch in all of world sport next to the feet of Lionel Messi. They're still as light as a kitten's, and an underestimated part of his physicality. Federer's feet are the source of a myth he inspires that some things can go on, unspoiled.

This seemingly endless period of prosperity for Federer and the others of the so-called "big four" is something that a lot people have grown tired of hearing about. But the consistency of the top men has created a kind of true north in tennis, from which every other player has taken their bearings and set a course for improvement.

Marin Cilic is one of a very small group of players who have made it close to the top of the tennis world, in arguably its most hostile era for challengers.

In the end, which may be closer than people think, this era will be remembered not only for its greatest player, but its greatest rivalries, and, perhaps with some luck for Marin Cilic, its upsets.