Federer ready to return with a bang after last year’s woe in Stuttgart
ROGER Federer can return to the top of the ATP rankings this week in Stuttgart but knows all too well the dangers lurking on grass as he comes back from his mid-season break.
The 36-year-old skipped the claycourt season, including the French Open, to concentrate on retaining his Wimbledon crown and kicks off his preparation on the German city’s slick lawns.
He will play German serve-and-volleyer Mischa Zverev in his first match today — a tricky test especially as he has not played a competitive match since a surprise loss to Australian youngster Thanasi Kokkinakis in March.
Last year, 20-time Grand Slam champion Federer lost his opener in Stuttgart to close friend Tommy Haas.
“Having lost here last year in the first round, for me, it resets the goals as well, and just take it one at a time and don’t think too far ahead,” Federer said.
“Not that I did that last year, but on grass, margins are very slim. It’s not so simple, especially when you haven’t played in three months.”
Federer will overhaul Rafael Nadal at the top of the rankings if he reaches the final on Sunday.
British number one Johanna Konta began her grass-court singles campaign with a straight-set win over Japan’s Kurumi Nara at the Nottingham Open.
Konta won 6-2 6-3 to reach the second round. British number two Heather Watson also moved into the second round with a 6-1 6-3 win against American Danielle Lao.
Katie Boulter went through with a 6-4 6-4 victory over Belgian Yanina Wickmayer, while Katie Swan lost 7-6 (7-5) 7-5 to Germany’s Mona Barthel.
In the men’s ATP Challenger event, Dan Evans beat Germany’s Dominick Koepfer 6-3 7-5 to reach the last-16.
THE thought hadn’t occurred to Johnny Sexton, but he’s been in this very situation before and not too long ago either. A year ago he was brought back into the Lions team charged with levelling a threeTest series after a humbling opening defeat, and the lessons have been stored away.
Twelve months on, he is part of a different team facing a different opposition but there are plenty of overlapping personnel.
Andy Farrell is on the coaching ticket, while Sexton, Tadhg Furlong, Jack McGrath and CJ Stander were all part of the match-day 23 in Wellington when the tourists turned things around.
On paper, the challenge is similar but a cohesive, champion Ireland team can draw on a year of wins to help steel themselves for battle in Melbourne.
Farrell is quite open about what they need to improve on the pitch, but also called on the team to prove their mettle in comments designed to get a response.
Sexton sat on the bench for the majority of last week’s game as Joey Carbery got his shot, but tomorrow Joe Schmidt will recall him to the team. And he is struck by the parallels.
“I actually didn’t think of that comparison but I was on the bench for that first game as well,” he mused.
“If you lose a game, you can look back and say, ‘If we play as well as we can, and do everything we can,’ you can live with it to a certain extent, but there’s parts of the game that we look back on and say, ‘We didn’t quite do that good enough.’
“We could go out and play absolutely brilliant this week and still not get the right result because we’re in Australia, playing against a very good team with very good players.
“That’s the nature of coming down at the end of the season and playing Tests down here.
“It’s probably similar in terms of ‘we didn’t play as well as we could in the first game’ and that was a frustration.
“If we’d played as well as we could in that first Test in New Zealand we felt we could have got a result. We felt the same this week — if we’d played as well as we could, we may have won.
“We may not have, but that’s the biggest frustration from our point of view. We didn’t hit the standards that we want to and the coaches demand, and let’s do that this week and see where it gets us.”
Farrell (left) bluntly laid out what is needed from the team. “We’ll see what we’re made of.