Monday, June 9, 2008

 

Monday, June, 9th, 2008

It´s dificult to keep heart during the clay court season, specially after the pounding Federer took at the hands of Nadal in yesterdays French Open final.

In the finals of Hamburg and Monte Carlo, he also lost to Nadal (much closer matches that were highly frustrating and nerve-racking to watch, because of all the lost opportunities) and, even worse, in Rome, after Nadal was injured and defeated, he blew an incredible chance to win the title by loosing to Stepanek in the quarters after having set point.

I once read somewhere that, on average, a tennis player spends around four years playing his very best. What makes a tennis player a legend is not playing incredibly well for one or two years (Hewitt, Safin, Rafter, Courier, etc) but being able to extend his career longer than those four years (Connors, Sampras, Agassi, Borg, etc)

Federer took 4 years to "warm up" (1999 to 2003), has had an amazing 4 years at very top of his game (2004 to 2007) and now seems slowly to be winding down. I'm really sad to say this, after all he is still only 26 years old, but at this particular moment he doesn't look like Superman anymore, he seems like a "normal" tennis player, still a top 3 player, but without the aura of invincability of the last 4 years.

From now on, he will have to fight daily for every win and, unlike Nadal on clay, everyone else will step into court with him having the belief they could beat him and, sooner or later, they will.

Also, his number 1 ranking will be up for grabs on a weekly basis from now on, because he had a virtually perfect second half of 2007 and, unless he is able to repeat that, he won't be able to maintain the top spot when the american hard court season begins (and if all goes horribly wrong at Wimbledon, an unthinkable tought last year, he could fall down to number 2 or 3 by the end of the tournament).

Maybe he will bounce back like in 2007, after his losses to Canas and Nadal, but that would take someone with a superhuman mental toughness to just put behind him what happened in the last two months and believe in himself again just as if it never occured...

If it doesn't happen, then this is like watching the end of an era, which had to come at some point, but sadly for him and us all his fans, is arriving much sooner than we expected...

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