“It sometimes looks like arm wrestling”: Federer has difficulty with contemporary tennis

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Eighteen months after his retirement, Roger Federer appears almost exclusively as an advertising figure. But he still follows the tennis circus, even if he doesn’t watch entire matches. “I don’t have time for that with the children,” Federer reveals in an interview with GQ. “Last year I might have seen a complete match. But I will follow the results and watch the highlights.”

Since his retirement, the twenty-time Grand Slam winner has been more enthusiastic than he expected: “I thought I would completely lose interest. But I still know a lot of players and would like to see how they do.”

Those who are not doing so well at the moment are players with a one-handed backhand: in mid-February, for the first time since the introduction of the world rankings in 1973, there was no one-handed player in the top 10. Blow for Federer, for whom the one-handed backhand is a trademark was: “I have already come to know that personally. On the other hand, it makes one-handers like Pete Sampras, Rod Laver or me more special. We’ll see where the game goes.”

Federer lacks variety

The Basel native is critical of certain tennis trends: “I would like to see more variation in today’s game. And I’d like to see more network attacks instead of just running from one side to the other. The problem with so many similar player types is that many rallies are the same. It sometimes looks like arm wrestling. I have always tried to make arm wrestling a different game.”

In fact, Federer has always been praised for his versatility and variety. His style was considered effortless and carefree. Federer didn’t like it at the time, as he says today: “I thought people didn’t see the fighter and winner in me. They always said how easy everything looked for me. I worked very hard for it.” (cmu)

Source : Blick