Federer keeps turning back the clock as he thrashes Zverev in warm-up for Wimbledon
Roger Federer has clearly avoided the Samson effect, after skipping the clay-court season and returning to tennis with a disconcertingly unfamiliar look.
Visually, Federer’s short-backand-sides haircut has taken years off him. Technically, he is in the form of his life, as yesterday’s thrashing of Alexander Zverev demonstrated.
The final of the Halle Open shaped up as a generation game: the 35-year-old monarch against the 20-year-old pretender to the throne. In the event, there was never any real prospect of a revolution. Federer waltzed to a 6-1, 6-3 victory in just 53 minutes. It was his ninth title at Halle, and the shortest of his 11 finals.
With a week to go before Wimbledon, Federer’s regal performance brought his odds crashing down to 5-2, well ahead of Andy Murray at 4-1 in second place.
This might seem surprising when you look at the big picture, in which Federer has not landed a Wimbledon trophy for five years, and is still cranking up his comeback from a 10-week lay-off. In fact, he has played only six tournaments in the past 12 months.
But then you turn to his rivals and they stand in disarray. Murray has made the quarter-finals of only two events this season and described his first-round exit from Queen’s on Tuesday as “a big blow”. Novak Djokovic is in such a state of confusion that he has taken a wild card into Eastbourne this week, thus uprooting his established Wimbledon routine.
The standings for 2017 show Rafael Nadal – who won the French Open and three other clay-court events – as the only man ahead of Federer. But Nadal, who pulled out
of Queen’s and has spent the last week practising at his own academy in Majorca, has been talking down his own Wimbledon prospects in characteristically pessimistic style. His bashed-up knees struggle with the low, crouching posture required by grass-court tennis.
If we leave aside perennial nearly men like Milos Raonic and Kei Nishikori, that leaves the new generation, of whom Zverev is the top dog. And yesterday the challenger could make no impact on Federer’s elegant, multi-faceted game.
The ultimate exponent of grasscourt tennis, Federer has modified his strategy over the past couple of weeks. In his comeback match in Stuttgart, he tried to keep up the same barrage of top-spin backhands that he used to pummel allcomers on the hard courts of Melbourne, Indian Wells and Miami. It did not work too well, as Federer lost to his fellow veteran Tommy Haas in three drawn-out sets. Yesterday he switched tactics and sliced his backhand two-thirds of the time, thus keeping the 6ft 6in Zverev reaching down around his ankles.
The victory means that Federer will now be seeded No3 at Wimbledon, behind Murray and Djokovic but ahead of Nadal in fourth. So the one thing we do know is that the two dominant forces of 2017 – both of whom have won one major, two Masters and one ATP 500 to date – cannot do battle until the final.
This memorable tennis season has already seen three ‘Fedal’ meetings. The first of them came in the Australian Open final and must go down as “the most exciting moment of 2017”, in the words of BBC commentator John Mcenroe.
As Mcenroe added: “Just when it appeared that Murray and Djokovic had finally blown by those two guys, now those two guys have blown by them. I think Andy just had to put in so much effort [at the end of 2016]. While with Novak, I suppose we shouldn’t be totally shocked that after being the first guy in 47 years to hold all four slams, there would be a let-down.”
Djokovic’s arrival in Eastbourne yesterday did feel out of character. After his dismal quarter-final exit from the French Open, the threetime Wimbledon champion hinted that he might consider taking a break from the sport. But this is high season for tennis and as Mcenroe put it: “I would say that at the end of the US Open, that is when he [Djokovic] is going to decide if he needs significant time off. I would be amazed if it is before then.”