FED’S BOUT OF THE JITTERS
Chase for eighth title is getting to me, admits Roger
THE modern record for the oldest champion at Wimbledon has stood since 1975.
But Arthur Ashe, aged 31, was a callow youth by comparison with 35-year- old Roger Federer, who made his first serious declaration of intent to win an eighth title.
As the light began to fade in the third set, Federer was easing away, back in the old routine and breaking minimal sweat as usual.
Long before that, though, we saw signs that what lies ahead here will not be straightforward if he is to take the prize which last belonged to him five years ago.
Federer lost the game’s first seven points and its first two games against Dusan Lajovic. He recovered his poise and the scoreboard, but the first two sets were riddled with evidence the Federer backhand is not quite as he wants it to be.
It had for so long been the weakness which Rafa Nadal’s crashing forehands would seek out and is now a weapon which the Swiss has such confidence in that he plays it extraordinarily early.
But Federer missed as many backhands as he accomplished in the first set that went to a tie-break. Federer was even running around the ball to play a forehand by the fifth game.
Time will tell how significant this was. It will not have escaped Federer’s notice that Nadal’s forehand is already firing on all cyclinders.
Federer admitted he had been unusually nervous. He said: ‘ It was definitely more acute than I normally feel. I was walking up to the locker room after my warmup and I was feeling excited and nervous. And then when I walked to the court it was still ongoing and after the warm-up it was still there.’
For all that, there was plenty to suggest that another extraordinary chapter in Federer’s relationship with Wimbledon lies ahead.
When the first set had reached the tie-break, Federer simply moved up two gears and blasted Lajovic away. A backhand that worked and consecutive cross-court forehands sealed it to love. A 105mph second serve was another statement of what has been described in one headline this week as ‘ the reinvention of Roger Federer’.
His search for a 19th Grand Slam title put him up against a player who had never won back-to-back games on grass at any level and though Serb Lajovic demonstrated psychological strength to recover his first service game of the second set, there was an element of Sunday club tennis about the way he lost the second. The 27-yearold, ranked 79th in the world, attempted to smash a ball straight out of the sky and missed spectacularly. It handed Federer a 3-1 lead in the set which he did not sacrifice.
It is hard to avoid the impression that Wimbledon is feeling a little more love for those who stand in this serial champion’s path. But the people know how much Federer has invested in this. The Australian Open title, his first for five years, made Federer the oldest male Grand Slam winner since Roy Emerson in 1967. He plainly has the appetite to be the history man of this territory, too.