Bleary-eyed and worse for wear, Roger Federer returned to the All England Club at 10am yesterday to commence his press duties, just five hours after he arrived back at his rented accommodation from a night on the tiles.
“My head’s ringing,” Federer said. “I don’t know what I did last night. I drank too many types of drinks, I guess. After the ball, we went to a bar and there were almost 30 to 40 friends that were there, so we had a great time. I got to bed at 5am, then woke up and just didn’t feel good.”
Despite the hangover, it did not take long for the record eight-times Wimbledon men’s singles champion to get into his stride. Three weeks today, he will turn 36, yet he has won two of the three grand-slam titles this year while his great rival, Rafael Nadal, won the other in Paris at the age of 31. So, when it was put to Federer yesterday that the men’s tour is lacking young pretenders, he was candid in his response.
“Every generation definitely is different,” Federer said. “Since my generation and Rafa’s generation, the next one hasn’t been strong enough to push all of us out really, so that has been helpful for us to stick around.”
Federer gave the impression that he was distinctly unimpressed by the lack of variety in the game of many of the younger players at Wimbledon this year. The grass courts may be slower than in years gone by, but some seem reluctant to venture towards the net at all, preferring to grind out long rallies from the baseline.
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“They can choose not to play that way, too, if the coach has taught them to play differently,” Federer said. “I know you can easily get sucked into that mode when you don’t want to attack, but if you can’t volley you aren’t going to go to the net.
“I have played almost every player here that wouldn’t serve and volley. It’s frightening to me, to see this at this level. I look at the stats and go into whichever round it is and see that the guy I’m going to face is playing 2 per cent of serve and volley throughout the championships. I’m going, ‘OK, I know he’s not going to serve and volley’, which is great.
“Then we are talking about grass, it was playing fast this week [compared with the first week]. I wish that we would see more players taking chances up at the net because good things do happen there. You want to be there and have to spend some time up there to feel confident and good there.”
It was then put to Federer that players were perhaps opting to follow the lead of Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, who play many of their shots from the baseline. “They are very different,” Federer replied. “Andy has a lot of variety in his way but, yes, a slugfest with Andy and Novak from the baseline, or Rafa for that matter, good luck. If you are No 50 in the world, it is not so simple to take them out.”
Federer does concede, though, that there are flaws in the ranking system, which does not help players climb as quickly as before. He can recall once claiming bonus points for beating higher-ranked players, before that rule was phased out in the late 1990s.
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Federer even said that he is benefiting from the sizeable gap between the ranking points at grand-slam events and regular tournaments. After winning Wimbledon, he is now ranked No 3, despite having played only seven events in the past 12 months.
Federer part of a dying breed
“That’s why, by playing little and making so many points at grand-slam level, it puts me in a totally different situation where I can really start picking and choosing my moments when to attack,” Federer said.
It is possible that Federer could, for the first time in five years, return to world No 1 as soon as August 21. It is more likely, though, for it to come after the US Open — which begins on August 28 — as he will probably opt to play just one Masters event next month in Cincinnati and skip Montreal.
“It’s going to be a three, four-way race or maybe a two-way race with me and Rafa at some stage when Andy is going to drop his world No 1 ranking,” Federer told the BBC. “If all of a sudden Andy starts winning, we also have to win. But, at some stage, if he starts dropping points, we’ll just get there. I hope it’s me and not Rafa because it would mean a lot to me to get back to No 1.”