LAWN TIME COMING
After Aus-some win, Federer out to reclaim past Wimbledon glory
The best in women’s tennis is missing, but the best there was on the men’s side is somehow back on top.
Roger Federer’s amazing Australian Open run, ending with a finals victory over old rival Rafael Nadal, was one of the great moments in sports this year. It also happened at 3:30 a.m. EST.
Though the 0.9 TV rating was the highest since that championship moved overnight in 2005, it only scratches the surface of what is possible if the two greats meet again in the Wimbledon finals. With Federer on his best surface (grass) and Nadal coming off an utterly dominant French Open, what once seemed impossible now seems likely.
“I don’t know what he did in the offseason, but if Federer were to win Wimbledon, that would be tremendous. I can’t even explain what it would mean. Such a stamp on his legacy,” ESPN analyst and 18-time Grand Slam champ Chris Evert said.
“I think back to the last two or three years, and I am a big fan of his, and when I watched him lose big matches in the semifinals or finals of Grand Slams I would be in tears,” Evert continued. “You’d see the strain on his face that he played with because it was like he was fighting and frustrated that he couldn’t keep up with the power or the fitness. And now all the pressure is off of him and he feels like he’s getting one more shot at everything. It’s a beautiful thing to see for all his fans. He hung in there even though he was losing. It’s almost like it’s deserved, that he earned this type of a year.”
It had been five years since Federer won a Grand Slam — he beat Andy Murray in the 2012 Wimbledon final — before conquering the hard courts of Melbourne. And age 35 is not a time one’s level starts to rise in tennis, especially with Murray and Novak Djokovic seemingly ready to take the reins from him and Nadal.
“I thought there’d be a slow descent and I never saw this coming,” Evert said. “It would be the most remarkable year a player has had if he wins here, a player most people had counted out. It’s almost as if you have to fight through some adversity to reach your peak, and both these players have.”
Djokovic and Murray are in the midst of that adversity. When Djokovic arrived in England last year, he had all four Grand Slam titles in his possession, but the Serb has fallen flat since. His low point may have been getting beaten 6-0 to end a straight-set loss to Dominic Thiem at the French Open. It was Djok- ovic’s first tournament with Andre Agassi mentoring him, and the American will be at Wimbledon in Djokovic’s corner.
But Evert suspects that Djokovic’s life — he was married in 2014, has one child with another on the way — has caught up with him and tennis has been surpassed as his top priority.
“Djokovic is a very strong person. One of the reasons his tennis has gone down is because life intervened with his tennis. He used to be robotic and have tunnel vision about it,” Evert said.
“It’s like everything else was secondary. His mental strength is the reason why he won a lot of matches. Whatever is happening in his life has been distracting to him and I don’t know if Agassi or anybody is going to cure that. Novak will get himself out of the situation. He’s so strong in his mind that we don’t know what he’s going through. We don’t know what he has to work out to get back to where he was.”