Nishikori stuns surly Federer
World No3 beaten in his ATP Finals opener Edmund reveals cause of his mystery illness
Roger Federer is looking for a 100th singles title in London this week, but he will have to go the long way round after losing his opening match last night in a flurry of miscued groundstrokes. Amazingly, it was the first time in 46 round-robin outings at the ATP Finals that he had failed to win a set.
You might not have imagined that nerves would be a factor for a man playing this event for a record 16th time. Yet that was Federer’s own verdict on an unusually sketchy performance, in which he clocked up no fewer than 34 unforced errors.
Federer even picked up a code violation for ball abuse – a real collectors’ item – after whacking a loose ball high into the crowd at the end of the first set. He appeared unusually grouchy, occasionally hurrying the ball-kids along as he went down to Kei Nishikori by a 7-6, 6-3 scoreline. “He thought I was angry,” Federer said afterwards, when asked what he had said to umpire Damian Steiner after that code-violation warning. “I wasn’t. Now I’m angry because I lost, but … He knows me very well apparently, or he thought so.”
Still, if you are going to have an opening-round stinker, best to do it at the one ATP event of the year where you get another chance. “I think maybe we both had a bit of nerves,” Federer added.
“It’s just that practice has been a bit all over the place. Practised in Queen’s, on the outside courts here, then centre as well. So it’s not always exactly the same conditions. It’s OK, now that the first match is out of the way.”
Perhaps we should have known that this would not be Federer’s night as early as the second game, when he tried to slice back a Nishi- kori serve but only succeeded in bouncing the ball straight down off his racket frame and then back up into his face.
Normally he controls the court so well that the ball sits up and begs. But this projectile seemed to rebel against his authority.
The one moment when Federer looked to be getting on top of an equally erratic Nishikori came late in the first set. He was leading 6-5 in games and looking for a break when he speared a big inside-out return that seemed almost certain to close out the point.
What happened instead was that Nishikori made a desperate backhand stab at the ball, which floated over the net and died for an apparently impossible winner. Federer lashed his racket at it in frustration, and Steiner showed commendable backbone by applying the letter of the law.
This was unquestionably a code violation, and if Steiner had ducked the challenge, he would have given credence to the argument that the top men are treated more leniently.
Meanwhile, it emerged last night that British No1 Kyle Edmund has undergone a tonsillectomy to clear up his recurring problems with viral illnesses, which has restricted his training schedule for much of the season.
Edmund has since jetted off on holiday, but expects to be able to work through a full pre-season in preparation for another tilt at the Australian Open – the tournament where he broke through in January by reaching the semi-finals.