2013 Season review of the self-destructive Roger Federer

Roger Federer

The Swiss did the right thing by skipping Rogers cup which had not been a kind tourney for him for quite some time now and went to Cincinnati as the defending champion. After prevailing over Tommy Haas in a very closely fought match, he faced Rafael Nadal in the quarters. He played a very good first set and won it by breaking the Spaniard late. However, the man who was aiming for the Montreal-Cincinnati double gave everything he had and robbed the great Swiss of a place in the semifinal.

It had been quite a contrasting year for Federer and Nadal. While the eight time French open champion had been enjoying a Midas touch all the way, Roger had failures written all over him. So, when the stage looked all set for a Federer-Nadal clash in the quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows, everyone was finger-crossed waiting for it to happen for the first time ever over there. But, unfortunately, as Federer himself would later say, he was in a self-destructive mood losing out to Tommy Robredo for the first time in his career and that too in straight sets.

His embarrassment in grand slams so ended this year having reached the final not even once. After a pathetic show in the US open, his woes seemed to have followed him in Shanghai too where he lost to the capricious Gael Monfills in three sets. That was just a third round of the tournament and when he reached Basel he had everything to play for – more so to qualify himself for the year ending masters final. But, the desperate maestro rejuvenated himself in the Swiss indoors winning all his matches comfortably to book a date with Juan Martin Delpotro for the second year in a row in the final. The Argentine upped his ante at the last moment and quelled his opponent to win the title for the second successive year. Though the disappointment was there, he could take solace from the fact that he did not lose to any journeyman unlike previous tournaments.

Then the players proceeded to Paris to have one final shot at the last masters tournament of the year. He avenged his defeat to Delpotro by slaughtering him in the quarter final at BNP Paribas to set up his first confrontation against Novak Djokovic this year. The Swiss, on his part, started pretty well but could not maintain the level deep into the match and hence ended up losing to his adversary in three sets.

As the year was about to an end, it was nice to see him playing much better – bringing variety of shots from his arsenal. Due to his late outburst, he somehow found his place to have a shot at the World Tour finals which he had won six times earlier in his career. He did well to reach the semifinal despite getting aligned in a group which was considered the sturdiest. But to add to his misfortune, he was up against Rafael Nadal who he had not beaten even once this year. The jinx continued to follow him as he was bull dozed in straight sets by the merciless Spaniard who was hoping to win the title for the first time in his career.

Summing up:

It would not require a tennis expert to predict how the year had been for the 17 time grand slam champion. Just by looking at his win-loss record of 45-17, anyone can say that he has dealt with the worst year of his career ever since grabbing his first grand slam in 2003. Like Sachin Tendulkar had once said that people would attribute you getting bowled quite a number of times to your growing age, talks had already begun amidst tennis enthusiasts if Federer’s losses this year had anything to do with his advancing age. If you do not look at his record superficially and analyse his progress this year carefully, you can arrive at a few positive points:

1.Federer has not lost to the next generation of players like Raonic, Tomic and Dimitrov. Even with his poor form, he seems to own them.

2. Towards the fag end of the season he had picked up his game and most of the matches which he had lost were decided only on the final set. This confidence he should be able to carry forward when the next season begins.

3.He is not prepared to surrender to the ravages of time and that is why he is trying to work out different permutations and combinations. The testing of increased dimensional racquet in Hamburg and Gstaad stands as a proof for his relentlessness.

4. His parting ways with his coach, Paul Annacone, suggests he is going to experiment something different. May be we will be knowing more about this decision in a month or so.

5. He himself has claimed that he should not have played with back pain. This only means he may not be repeating this mistake in the future and would reserve his body for important occasions.

6.Despite so many losses, he is still ranked well within the top ten which means there are others who are doing even worse.Therefore, it is not prudent to write off Roger Federer whatever may be the circumstances. There is a great chance that even other players would undergo such a scenario next year. If that happens and Federer brings up his A game, anything can happen. Maybe we will get to see No.18 written against his name.