After all these years, Roger Federer is still No. 1 in the world. He won the last Grand Slam (that would be the Aussie Open) and most agree he’s the best player of all time.
Still, there’s trouble in The House of Federer.
Maybe it’s just that even the greatest of geniuses waver. Einstein, in his later years, was flat out wrong with some of his theories. Some of Picasso’s works have been less then memorable. And Baryshnikov‘s once explosive leap is now more modest. But it’s stunning to see TMF (The Mighty Fed) stumble. Now his head is down. Where unassailable, almost arrogant confidence used to reign, a worried expression shouts doubt. Deepening lines emerge above his mouth. He’s no longer the man-child in full flight.
It’s not just that Fed failed to make the quarters of three straight tournaments for the first time since ’01. Or that (if you add on his loss in the Estoril semis) he’s now failed to reach the finals of four straight tournaments. His setbacks have come on both on hard- and clay-courts and these losses weren’t at the hands of his prime rivals — say Rafa Nadal or Novak Djokovic — but scored by superb yet hardly domineering Euros: Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis in the third round at Indian Wells; Czech Tomas Berdych in the fourth round in Miami; Latvian Ernests Gulbis in Fed’s first match on clay in Rome (where Roger did stave off six match points); and Spaniard Alberto Montanes in straight sets in the Estoril semis. That four losses to players modest rankings of Nos. 33, 20, 40 and 34.
Of course, just last year, after getting to the tearful ’09 Aussie Open final, he slumped badly. Then, after fighting ill health and slamming his racket in Miami, he promptly turned his year around with a definitive win in Madrid over Nadal en route to history-making victories at the French Open and Wimbledon. After all, as Neil Harman noted, Federer “is the master of compartmentalizing defeats, steadying the ship and turning on the grace and style when it really matters, in best-of-five-set occasions.”
But there are ample signs of a genius in decline. Usually a man of serene grace, we now see him on the defensive, out of place, off-balance and scrambling to swat low-percentage squash shots. In Portugal, a stream of unforced errors, 50 in all, streamed from his racket. Simple volleys were dumped into the net, rally forehands zoomed long, curious miss-hits pinballed the arena, his serve awry, his backhand erratic.
“Oh, my goodness,” said broadcaster Nick Lester. “An absolute sitter gifted…A shock, it has to be said… Such an untypical Federer show. His game is as gray as the skies above…Questions abound as to where his tennis is at. That was not pretty in the slightest.”
Federer himself will admit his game “wasn’t up to speed,” or say “you can’t always be 100 percent” or claim he just needs a few more matches. He’ll admit he’s having trouble moving on clay and concede, “My serve wasn’t working…That’s the way it goes sometimes.” Federer can’t dominate forever. It can’t be easy to be a world-class athlete and have twin infant daughters. The field is young, brimming with talent and eager to prove the master is fallible.
In the end, even geniuses get the blues.
