Federer still fighting battle of ages

NEW YORK — The numbers are not the sort that Roger Federer likes to see beside his name.

One of them — his age, 32 — he cannot control.

The other — his ranking, No. 7 — he insists he can.

“People are going to say what they like,” Federer said Saturday, two days before his first-round match at the U.S. Open. “Important is that I concentrate on my game and that the passion is there, that I work the rightway, that I’m prepared and that I feel like I can win a tournament.”

The five-time U.S. Open champion is seeded seventh, the biggest number next to his name at a Grand Slam tournament since 2003, the year he started on his record-setting run of 17 majors.

In June, Federer exited Wimbledon in the second round, the earliest he’d been dismissed from a major tournament since the 2003 French Open. Starting with that loss, his season has included a steady diet of defeats that would have once been considered freakish and a withdrawal from a tournament — the Rogers Cup in Montreal — that went unexplained.

All these factors point toward an obvious conclusion: Age is taking its toll on the most decorated men’s player ever.

Not since Pete Sampras captured the trophy in 2002 has a man over 30 won the U.S. Open.

But Federer doesn’t envision quite such a grim picture. Abad back that might help explain some of his summer doldrums is no longer bothering him. A new racket that confounded him over the summer has been shelved for the time being.

While his ranking, and corresponding seeding, has dropped from third to seventh in the nine weeks between Wimbledon and the Open — where his firstround match is against 61st-ranked Grega Zemlja — Federer considers himself fit enough to contend.

“Now I can really say I’m really just focused on the point for point and that’s why I’m not concerned,” he said. “My back problem is not that major. I just need to make sure I don’t have any bad moments in the future.”

Federer would love to wipe away most of this 2013 season. He has a grand total of one tournament title, won at a small event in Halle, Germany — a grass-court tune-up for Wimbledon.

In addition to his second-round Wimbledon loss to 116th-ranked Sergiy Stakhovsky, Federer has fallen to No. 114 Federico Delbonis and No. 55 Daniel Brands, the sort of players who used to feel beaten by Federer before they even walked on the court.