RF Tennis News 2017

There Is No Hiding From Roger Federer

Giri Nathan - Deadspin.com
July 17, 2017



David Ramos/Getty Images


Among the many aspects of Roger Federer that defy comprehension, most of them having to do with the possibilities of the human body, one puzzle has been stuck in my head lately. That is: his plain likability in spite of what looks, on paper, like so much countervailing evidence.

A dispassionate survey of his resumé would peg him as blandly regal, maybe unctuously luxe at worst. When he wears Wimbledon all-white it reads less like dress-code adherence and more like self-actualization. In an already genteel sport Federer has found a new apex, a new cloud to lounge on. His appeal never had much to do with relatability, and his roster of endorsements does him no favors here: Rolex, Mercedes-Benz, Moët & Chandon, Credit Suisse. If he is in your commercial break or in the pages of your magazine, he is peddling things outside the realm of almost every viewer’s means. If he is on the tennis broadcast, he is doing things outside the realm of almost every peer’s physicality. Nor is he particularly bashful about any of this. His personal monogram, a precious little gilt alloy of his initials, could inspire a world of resentment, but, somehow—no, this makes a weird sort of sense, even when it appears on corny cream blazers or cardigans. Maybe this is the most direct way of framing the issue: I see a man walk onto court caked up in all this, as Federer did in 2009—


Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

—and not only do I not loathe this man or cheer for his humbling, I even hope for him to win, and want him to keep winning even after he’s already won more than any other man ever has. And I want him to rack up those wins with dramatic backhanded death blows, too, without much regard for a bright young aspirant getting crushed underfoot. But that feeling could not last forever. (Even if his ageless game could apparently hold up its end of the deal.) As a longtime fan I always wondered where the limits of my greed lay. At what point does the appeal of Goliath, already a little counterintuitive and unseemly on its face, fade out altogether? When does it feel like excess?

Yesterday’s Wimbledon men’s final, in which No. 3 seed Federer thrashed No. 7 Marin Cilic, 6-3, 6-1, 6-4, forced me up against that border between rabid loyalty and “Hmm, maybe this is enough.” More than once I winced as Roger knifed a perfect backhand return deep into the court; more than once I sensed relief when the Croat simply landed a first serve in the box. That is not what the first four games of the match foretold: Cilic, a player of devastating power, came out swinging those heavy groundstrokes that had Federer scrambling and looking pregnable. What undid all the promise of this match was a blister on the bottom of Cilic’s right foot that had bloomed during his four-set semifinal against Sam Querrey. Before the final, medical staff drained it of fluid, had even injected it with anesthetics, but it forced itself into the match nevertheless, an unwelcome third competitor. (See the grisly scene for yourself.) When you are walking on something like that, a game of elite grass court tennis—which demands so much twitchy, lateral movement, so much friction between man and shoe and shoe and turf—becomes an exercise in masochism. “My mind was all the time blocked with the pain,” Cilic said later. That kind of pain dulls your reaction. It doesn’t matter if you’ve grooved your shots into perfection if you’re getting to every ball late, and reeling.

This crisis reached its public climax at 3-0 in the blowout second set, when Cilic sat down for a changeover and left nothing inside. Under a towel and ringed by medical staff, he sobbed. As Cilic tells it, those tears had to do not with the pain itself but rather with the gulf between what his mind wanted to do and what his body would permit. At his 11th Wimbledon, Cilic had finally made a final, and he could not play it the way he knew he could: “It was the worst moment I could have experienced. It didn’t hurt so much that it was putting me in tears. It was just that feeling that I wasn’t able to give the best on the court, that I cannot give my best game and my best tennis, especially at this stage of my career, at such a big match,” he said in the postmortem.


Alastair Grant/AP Images

This is not a common sight in the middle of a sporting event. Live commentators, not exactly the people equipped to treat the finer points of human emotion, largely stuck to hushed silence and disbelief here, but Boris Becker did drop an evocative phrase: “There is no hiding place,” he said, referring to the merciless exposure that comes with competing on the most famous court in tennis, for the highest stakes. Becker’s words left me envisioning such a Hiding Place, not a broom closet, but a simple booth of soundproof black velvet, in the corner of the court and available once a match, where a beleaguered athlete could get some catharsis—could scream or pray or puke in peace, banish an unsightly itch or excavate a problem booger without the scrutiny of millions. Watching Cilic red-faced and despondent with only a towel as defense, you wished he could find such a place, because the cameras felt like a startling intrusion.

If the moment was difficult to watch it was not because it broke some kind of code of sporting machismo, as our most craven bloviators would have it, but because of the raw intimacy—an ego flayed in public. When people talk about the drama of sports they’re generally referring to the action of the game itself—a story told through feats on the court—and yet here was a match functionally over within an hour, a lackluster on-court product, but one that nevertheless had the resonance of an elegy, enough to cast a pall over a room of stans.

Roger, for his part, handled all this with respect and grace. As Cilic lingered in his chair well past the umpire’s signal that time was up and play was to continue, Federer took to the court and stayed warm. For the rest of the match he did his job, which was to win, and without too much deference to his opponent’s weakness. All the formidable weapons he has showcased over the 15 years and over the last two weeks held up yesterday. Early on he hit Cilic with the coldest drop shot:

Drop shots are hard at the best of times, players so often use them in desperation. This completely froze Cilic. pic.twitter.com/wNqyzdJ3ES

— Adam Joseph (@AdamJosephSport) July 16, 2017

His delivery was pitiless throughout: Federer won an otherworldly 78 percent of points on serve, compared to Cilic’s 54. On this early exchange, the only real highlight-reel fodder in the whole match, Cilic scrambles to the net to find a gorgeous angle, lands on his butt, only to realize Federer right there waiting for it with a rubber wrist, coolly flicking it back over the net with an inch of clearance.



Federer was always there, going nowhere, even as Cilic crumbled. He got his breaks of serve and coasted. Early in the match he might emit the occasional Swiss German exclamation, but both of the first two set points he converted without any fanfare or gesture—the first off a Cilic double-fault, the second off an ace—just a walk to the chairs in mute triumph. Only after he won that championship point, an ace down the T identical to the one that handed him the second set, did he unveil the familiar Federer 2017 victory posture: arms up and right-angled, pre-weepy face. The rout was smooth enough that for once—an unfamiliar feeling for me—you might be tempted to root for Federer’s perfection to crack, just to restore some element of competition to the match, to make it feel earned.

That perfection has its many charms: there’s the transcendence on court, his overall decency off of it, and, more recently, the late-empire dad appeal. (He takes goofy vacation selfies; his two sets of twins played with their own faces as he hoisted his trophy.) But after seeing Federer skewer a man seven years his junior, a man literally weeping for how much he wanted something that Roger had seven times over, maybe you start to question the whole enterprise. In tennis, a game of individuals, the zero-sum nature of sport feels starker still. There is no pre-retirement tour of duty with the Spurs to put a ring on your finger: Either you will yourself to it, or you don’t. For the players trapped in a post-Federer, post-Nadal generation—players like Marin Cilic, Milos Raonic, Grigor Dimitrov, all 20-somethings that Federer wrecked en route to the title—the window for anything major is closing fast. A new generation of talent is waking up and the old legends are in no hurry to leave.

Just like fellow lovable juggernaut Rafael Nadal ran through the French Open, Roger Federer won Wimbledon without dropping a set, becoming the first man to do that since Björn Borg in 1976. By claiming this eighth title he broke his tie with Pete Sampras in Wimbledon, and holds that record alone; he extended his lead over the rest of the entire men’s field to 19 majors. Roger Federer is nearly 36 and there is no more territory left for him to conquer. For the better part of my life, my mood has hung on his play, and now I can finally foresee a future me that is totally indifferent to Federer’s tournament results, that watches with contented detachment. It’s one thing to say that now, while freshly sated with a title, albeit a title won in mild anticlimax. It’ll be a much harder pose to sustain in the second week of a major when he has yet to drop a set. Twenty, you know, is a pretty round number.

Monday, 17 July 2017

Moment of history is a family affair

Federer celebrates his eighth title in front of parents, wife and children


By Kate Battersby - Wimbledon


In the end, history came quietly to Wimbledon 2017. It was 3.51pm at the end of a men’s final where injury’s fates blunted Marin Cilic’s weapons; and with a second serve ace, Roger Federer wrote his moniker once again into the record books here.




You’ll find the name monopolising numerous volumes already, of course. But this was the achievement he wanted above all others – an eighth Wimbledon title, more than any other man in the 131 editions of this greatest of all Championships.

When that moment of history came, Federer could find not a single sound. He raised his arms in loving salute to his wife Mirka, father Robbie and mother Lynette. Just fleetingly, his face crumpled as they and the rest of the Centre Court crowd rose to him. His eighth Wimbledon crown 14 years after his first, his 19th Grand Slam title, at 35 years 342 days the oldest Slam champion since the game turned professional 49 years ago, the first man in 41 years to win Wimbledon without the loss of a set – we can all but recite the statistical roll of honour.

“Winning eight here is very special,” he said afterwards. “Wimbledon was and will always be my favourite tournament. My heroes walked the Grounds and the courts here. Because of them, I became a better player, too.

“I was just so happy that I was able to win here again because it's been a long road – tough at times, but that's how it's supposed to be. So to be Wimbledon champion for an entire year now is something I can't wait to savour and just enjoy. It was super special. To be part of Wimbledon history is truly amazing.”

Memories are indeed made of this – the sight of Federer’s younger twins Leo and Lenny, perched with feet drumming the roof of the commentary boxes in front of the players’ box, gazing at their waving father with the piercing steadfastness that only three-year-olds can muster; and their sibling Charlene (or was it Myla? Identical twins can be tricky) clambering across the same commentary box roof in miniature replica of Pat Cash 30 years ago, to sit beside her baby brothers. Do Charlene and Myla remember the last time they saw their father raise the golden trophy here, on a rainy afternoon in 2012? Perhaps. But they turn eight next week, so they have more sophisticated stuff to ponder than dad’s day at work.

"I was just really a normal guy growing up in Basel,
hoping to make a career on the tennis tour"
- Roger Federer

The rest of us remember that day, though, as we will remember this one. Hundreds of millions of us crowded into the close, humid air of the Centre Court – in the stands, on the Hill, via analogue airwaves, by satellite, by digital media… We stood witness, for history was here.

“Winning eight is not something you can ever aim for,” mused Federer. “I was not that kid. I was just really a normal guy growing up in Basel, hoping to make a career on the tennis tour.

“You would have laughed if I told you I was going to win two slams this year. I also didn't believe that I was going to win two this year. I did ask everybody on my team sincerely if they thought I could win majors again. It was important that my team believed it. It wasn't just me trying to carry the team; I need the team to carry me most of the time. When you're doubting yourself, they reassure you. If you're feeling too good, they make sure you come back to planet earth and put you in your place. The answer from them was always the same: if you're 100% healthy, you're well-prepared, and you're eager to play, anything's possible.”

It cheapens other wondrous chapters in the annals of tennis to declare this final one of the great contests, but its story was revealing of Federer nonetheless. This most graceful of competitors is ruthless to his very bone, and for the evidence we had only to watch him at the changeover when he was a set and 3-0 up. Yards to his left, Cilic sat surrounded by a doctor, a physio, the tournament supervisor and the referee, actively sobbing as the hopelessness of his injury engulfed him. As the drama unfolded, Federer was at his most elaborately unruffled, strolling past his opponent to the service line without a glance. It wasn’t merely his job to shut out all extraneous factors; it was his instinct, his vocation. And for the 102nd time on the Wimbledon greensward, he fulfilled that calling.

Think of it as a boxing match. No matter that the Croat was bruised and bleeding, Federer kept right on punching him until he couldn't get up off the canvas any more. Tennis is prettier than boxing, but underneath that lovely façade, it’s a prizefight just the same. Federer’s appetite for the prize has never wavered, and it didn’t now.

“I still don’t know what the problem was because he was serving big,” mused Federer. “If I saw him limping around, I would start to think, ‘okay, maybe I’ll throw in a drop shot to really check him out’ – because you need to hurt him, where it hurts already.”

The elegant assassin isn’t done yet. He will be back in 2018. He wants more. But history is already here, and its name is Roger Federer.

Steerpike60 wrote:I think we all knew this after yesterday, but Roger has officially qualified for the YEC in London:

http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/news/federer-nitto-atp-finals-2017-qualifies

"Six-time champion Roger Federer, the most successful player in the history of the season finale, has qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals for a 15th time. "

Guardian Article wrote:Roger Federer cemented his reputation as the greatest player to grace his sport by lifting a record eighth Wimbledon title with a one-sided victory over Marin Cilic, whose thin hopes of an upset were popped by a blister that troubled his movement and tormented his mind.

MaxUS wrote:

Guardian Article wrote:Roger Federer cemented his reputation as the greatest player to grace his sport by lifting a record eighth Wimbledon title with a one-sided victory over Marin Cilic, whose thin hopes of an upset were popped by a blister that troubled his movement and tormented his mind.

After enduring the on-court post-match interviews with their unseemly attention to apparent injury, and then reading the match thread with the back and forth on the same, I find this quote to be the best encapsulation of the storm in the teacup that is Blistergate. Thanks for the link.

It is an absolute honor to work with you, @RogerFederer. pic.twitter.com/QmyK4DoebE

— Wilson Tennis (@WilsonTennis) July 17, 2017

CEO TidjaneThiamcongratulates our brand ambassador @rogerfederer & celebrates our long term partnership. https://t.co/2tSqcrI255 pic.twitter.com/1osLuzh8Bi

— Credit Suisse (@CreditSuisse) July 16, 2017

.@RogerFederer boards #NetJets with his 19th grand slam trophy after his record breaking 8th win at #Wimbledon #OnlyNetJets pic.twitter.com/ZGXCJ0QYcA

— NetJets(@NetJets) July 17, 2017

How it all adds up for Roger the Great

Roger Federer and the power of eight – and it has little to do with luck


Roger Federer on Sunday became the oldest man in the Open era to lift the Wimbledon trophy as he won his 19th Grand Slam title


By Marianne Bevis - The Sport Review

Tuesday 18 July 2017



Roger Federer won his eighth Wimbledon title on Sunday  Photo: Dubai Duty Free Championships


It has been hard to mention the name of Roger Federer in the last three weeks or so without the number eight following soon after.


And by now, the reason will have become clear to anyone with even a passing interest in sport: Federer became one of the rare sporting superstars to headline both the front and back pages of almost every newspaper in the land.

Late on Sunday afternoon, he became the first man in history to win an eighth men’s singles title at the All England Club, the oldest man in the Open era to lift the trophy, and it extended his record in Majors to 19.

The number 19, in its own way, had become something of a touchstone during the tournament: Federer was playing in his 19th Wimbledon, at the famous Club located in SW19, and was targeting his 19th Major.

He was also just 19 years old when he announced his arrival at Wimbledon with a bang to beat seven-time and defending champion Pete Sampras in the fourth round in 2001—the only match they would ever contest.

For the first time this year, however, there was no Court 19 at Wimbledon, so Federer could not practise there before the final even if he had wanted to. So where did he head for that last warm-up with coaches Severin Luthi and Ivan Ljubicic? Court 8.

And those with good memories may recall that he practised on Court 8 before his last Wimbledon final in 2015, too. That day, he went on to lose to Novak Djokovic. This year, those last loosening hits preluded his eighth title.

That record No8 had, of course, eluded Federer for several years. It was back in 2012 that the Swiss won No7, and he had twice reached the final without closing out the deal.

So perhaps now, as he approached his 36th birthday, even the pragmatic Swiss had decided to seek out a good luck charm.

Yet that No8 rang distant bells.

It was back in Dubai in 2013 that Federer beat Nikolay Davydenko in the quarter-finals to notch up his 888th career win, prompting him to post a message on Facebook:

Eight is my favourite number! One of my friends just emailed me and reminded me that I just won my 888th match on tour. Very cool.”

A favourite because eight features so strongly in his birthdate, 08-08-81, perhaps? Whatever the reason, he went on later that year to set up, with his long-term agent Tony Godsick, a new sports agency: Team8.

But while Federer may be a man of habit, of routine, even of minute control, he rarely comes across as a man of superstition, a man where luck has much to do with anything.

Not for him the obsessive rituals of Rafael Nadal, whose bottles are placed with millimetre precision during matches, nor the stripping of his racket grip at every change of ends, à la Richard Gasquet, nor the seeking out a ball that has just won a point for Andy Murray, nor Bjorn Borg’s habit of wearing the same shirt for every defence of his Wimbledon title.

Indeed, as Federer’s—and Sampras’s—former coach, Paul Annacone asserted in the New York Times when they joined forces in 2011:

I can tell you that Roger and Pete, the only superstition they have is that they’re not superstitious. We don’t sit down with Roger and talk about ‘This would be [Wimbledon] No7.” And I think that’s great because it helps [Roger] stay in the moment, and if you get too caught up in the what ifs, you can drift away from the reality."   - Paul Annacone

Annacone no longer coaches Federer, but they remain good friends, and he still admires that ‘bigger picture’ quality of the Swiss.



Photo: Marianne Bevis


He told The Sport Review at Wimbledon this week: “I look at how he manages his career and how pragmatic he’s been about trying to adapt to the environment—I need a break, OK I’ll take a break.

“He’s very good about making decisions without panicking. He trusts his skills, he knows that it’s most important for him to be mentally and physically prepared, and that’s really hard as a competitor, to step back.”

When Federer talked of ‘the long game’ back in Dubai 2013, he was 31, and already batting away questions about how long he would continue to play.

“I just want to give myself the best possible chance to play as long as I can. And then eventually it will be clear that it’s time to stop, but the time’s definitely not now. We know things change very quickly—got to be ready and open for it, and I am. I’m not being naïve that I can play for another 15 years, but I’d like to give myself a chance to play for many more years to come…”

But he went on to explain to me how maintaining his form through 888 wins had nothing to do with luck but was rather a creative, evolving process.

“When you’ve played 500, 800, a 1,000 matches, maybe sometimes you’re like—you try hard but it’s OK to lose—and that’s not the mindset to have. You always want to have the fire to come through at the end, you know?

So you sometimes get a bit—comfortable, I like to call it. I have really tried to fight it all the time, to make sure I have enough fire going, and that motivation is not the issue. That’s why you need to keep practices exciting, your daily routines you have to have fun, otherwise it becomes a bit of a drain

“And that’s where I always changed it up, where I’ve practised in the past, with whom I’ve practised, make it fun with my entourage.”

More than four years on, and with his 36th birthday looming, Federer continues to bat away the ‘retirement’ issue, and after undergoing his first ever surgery last year—to a knee—he is a little more circumspect but no less sure of what will determine his ability to continue.

“There’s never a guarantee, especially not at 35, 36. But the goal is definitely to be here again next year to try and defend.

“[But] you don’t know how your body is going to react to that kind of pressure when you’re moving, you’re not free, you’re tense. That’s why you always need to have the right balance between practice, matches and vacation… That’s going to be the interesting thing moving forward, how I’m going to be able to manage that.”

He was then asked what had enabled him to achieve the records he has. He factored in many things, but luck was not one of them.

“I think at this stage it’s really consistency… And I felt like I dreamed pretty big as a kid. I believed that maybe things were possible that others thought were never going to be achievable. That helped me.

“Then I just think I trained really hard and very clever over all the years. I go back to my first coach, to my coaches today, and the same thing with fitness all the way; I think every step of the way I always had the right people.

“Then I had wonderful, amazing people around me in my wife, my parents, who always kept me very grounded, kept me the person I am still today.

“Then in the game, I guess, yes, I was blessed with a lot of talent, but I also had to work for it. Talent only gets you that far really.”

It was probably no coincidence that he opted for Court 8 on Sunday as he prepared to compete for his eighth title, even though it made no difference in 2015. But why not, just for the fun of it?

And that he went on to seal victory this time with his 8th ace of the match, leaving Marin Cilic with just eight games in their eighth career meeting, well how lucky was that?

Which begs the question: When Federer returns next year in pursuit of his ninth title, will there have to be a new lucky number on the block? Perhaps, for a start, Wimbledon will clip its grass on Court 9 to 9mm instead of 8mm?

No, let’s be clear: When it comes to the achievements of Federer, luck has had nothing to do with it.

InspiredTennis wrote:I liked this article from the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jul/17/roger-federer-wimbledon-record-class-apart


........While this was his 19th grand slam victory, another record, few would bet against more coming his way. For even now, in the autumn of his career, he stands tallest of all. The eternal – and the immovable.