Federer keeps winning company

By Mark Hodgkinson in Paris
Last Updated: 1:07am BST 25/05/2007

What is the collective noun for a group of sporting megastar buddies? Not content with joshing with golfer Tiger Woods, Roger Federer has been exchanging holiday snaps with boxing world heavyweight champion Vladimir Klitschko and also agreed to the rarest of tennis requests from Rafael Nadal last weekend, giving him his shirt in the locker-room.

Federer collects athlete friends like Maria Sharapova collects stamps - with plenty of enthusiasm - and his tales of pals in the sporting world were an indication of just how happy and composed the world No 1 has been ahead of the French Open, which starts here on Sunday. He also took in the Champions League final this week, enjoying more sporting greats.

"I follow good players. Kaka was excellent, even though I like Steven Gerrard too. I think the right team won," Federer said last night.

Of course, Federer's sunny, upbeat outlook has everything to do with the result in last Sunday's final of the Hamburg Masters, where he finally got one over his bete noire - or should that be his bete rouge? - by scoring a first win over Nadal on red clay. Klitschko, the Ukrainian man-mountain boxer, was in Federer's private courtside box for the final, and it was afterwards that Nadal, another pugilist, asked for the Swiss player's sweat-soaked shirt. When have the top two players ever performed that footballing ritual before? And Nadal wanted it autographed as well.

Not that Federer has been getting carried away by his win in Germany. "Of course, I've just beaten Nadal, of course I've just won Hamburg, but the toughest, hardest part is still ahead of me. It's important to play down your chances a bit," Federer said yesterday from a Parisian boutique hotel where he was discussing the racket which he helped to develop, and then launched this season, the Wilson K-Factor.

A win at Roland Garros would give Federer his first French Open title, and also make him only the third man in history, after the American Don Budge and Australia's Rod Laver, to hold all four grand slam titles at the same time. Budge and Laver's rackets were made from trees; Federer's is constructed with the sort of materials you build a space station with.

Why did it take Federer so long to work out Nadal's dirt-court game? "Because he's a great player on clay. It's as simple as that," Federer said. "But I won't now come into a match and say, 'Look, I know how to play him, I'm going to beat him', because I need a lot of factors going my way. I need to serve well, I need to be aggressive, I need to keep the ball in play at the right times.

"You have to play smart against Rafa, especially on clay, as he covers the court so well. Beating him so convincingly in the second and third sets in Hamburg did give me the feeling that I had figured him out. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to beat him every time and I'm very well aware of that. But to beat him on his favourite surface, that's a step forward, that's very important for me."

Federer admitted that he had experienced an emotional low in Rome this month, with a third-round exit and then the sacking of his coach, Tony Roche. "I was disappointed with the loss in Rome, I wasn't happy with my attitude on the court, then there was the change with the coach," Federer said. "There were many things. There was a lot of talk, a lot of pressure, a lot of everything. Everyone was asking me if I was still OK. People were happy for me, or maybe they were sad. It was strange,"

"I just wanted to get away from it all and play a good Hamburg. And I did that. But now it's great. Now I can focus on what I have to do, that's playing tennis."

Federer said he thought Nadal asking for his shirt was "a nice gesture", but he sounded more enthralled when discussing "hanging out" with Klitschko.

"Athletes in general, I feel very close to them. OK, of course there are differences, but there are also a lot of similarities between boxing and tennis. It's one-on-one combat. It's a knock-out system. Every sportsman goes through the same thing," Federer said.

"We met at an awards ceremony in Germany a couple of years ago, and then we kept in contact, though we never got the chance to meet up, and he kept sending me pictures of his holidays. But finally we could meet up. That was nice. He came to every match in Hamburg.

"Will I try some boxing? I told him that we have to take it easy. He thought that tennis was a brutal sport. Don't ask me why. He should be used to brutality."

"Relatively shy but friendly and sociable" seems to be a reasonable profile of the Fedster..

And a bit of a sports nut in general!! :lol:

completely off-topic --- I'm still not 100% convinced by that racquet change. It seemed to be when the UEs started creeping in.

It does seem too much of a coincidence, doesn't it?

Sometimes I wonder if he does too much to please others involved in the game. He is so dutiful towards his sponsors too. It's not been unknown for him to put his watch on especially to lift a trophy at the end of a tournament, specifically so that the photos take will show the watch (it is rolex who sponsor him, isn't it?)..

Before (this is from Fed's 2005 SW19 win I think):



After:

Good spot there petalp...on the racquet issue, I think it's fairly normal to take a while to get used to a new racquet- I mean, look at a snooker player and his cue, for example. I suppose the good thing is if Federer really doesn't get used to the new one, he can go back to his old model.

I guess the big question with that one is how much the new racquet was driven by him, or whether it was Wilson's request.

Yes I mentioned my doubts a few times about the change of racket. We know what happened to Courier when he was told to change the design of his racket cause Sampras had the same and for marketing reasons it was not good to have 2 number ones playing with the same. Courier went from the top rank to nowhere and sued Wilson for $$millions because he lost his feel and everything with it.

I can imagine the changes in Fed's racket were minimum (if any) but when you wack a 200km ball coming at you and need to expedite it 2 inches to the corner of the opposite side, you better feel 100% confident about it. If the doubts creep in, it's over. very much looked like what happened v Canas and Volandri and even in many other matches.

Federer has mentioned that the racket at the AO was a paint job so I imagine the real change of racket was after it or after dubai most likely as he had plenty of time to adapt then. We all know what hapened afterwards in Miami, IW and recently rome.

Clearly now that he has won in Hamburg, his sponsors can safely emphasize and market the bloody (K for Kontrol) ;) racket.

Clearly it was strongly suggested by Wilson. Federer had won Wimbledon, the USO and then the AO without dropping a set. I thin kthey "financially" convinced him.

Hi Tenez & all...

I agree with you about:

- 1. The fact FED changed of the racquet has generated some problems related to the fact that he has definitely to fine turn his game given the new "instrument", i.e. IMO this is very similar to what happens to a music virtuoso :) : the fact of changing of instrument implies to work even more to "understand" and master his new tool so to reach (and hopefully) moving ahead from the old "performances" (BTW: in the case of Tennis this is even worst because you have to fine turning given a changing environment, i.e. the game of your opponents ;) )..

I really believe that this is really what happen to FED at the beginning of this season...

Nevertheless, I really believe he was aware of all these possible shortcomings and he have accepted..

Why? Because in some sense the K factor is his own racquet; it has been build with him and for him so, I am sure, Wilson gave to Roger a nice amount of money but at the same time FED accepted this change because having his own racquet is definitely something you can be proud of at the end of your career: How many players can say to themselves, look during my career they have even build a special racquet to suite my Tennis..

I mean it is something like to have an additional Slam title IMO :D .

-2. Said that, Tenez, never I say never (I'm kiting but still :P ) associate or put in the same sentence the name of a Tennis maestro and artist like FED with the name of a poor (boring) -from a Tennis perspective- no classy player like Courier :angry: .

In the past Courier was definitely in my black list with Mr. Chang :angry: (who definitely arrived at the top of my list with his useless Tennis)...Why? because during that years there was an artist, i.e. IMO Mr. Edberg who was flying above all others..And then see Edberg losing from these two (poor-in terms of talent-bug very good in terms of fight spirit I agree-) "players" well it was so sad so horrible..Ahhh why Chang did what he did in the RG final in 1989 :( and Courier who was able to prevent Stefan from winning a couple of additional AO..AHHH..Too much)

Anyway, taste are taste, and I am quite sure some of you could have found entertaining Currier's Tennis as well the Chang one: In that case apologies..

But, for a great specialist and lover of great Tennis and great Tennis artist like you Tenez, once again, never oh never put in the same sentence the name of Courier (& or Chang) with one of the all great artists who build the legend of this sport as for instance, Borg Lendl, John, Pete, FED and even Connors who was definitely less boring to watch that these two.. :rolleyes:

Hi TV we definetely have a similar taste for tennis styles.

I agree that Fed knew about the possibilties of changing racket but one never quite envisage the full extend of the consequences. Had he finally decided he cannot play with it, I think it could have easily ruined him because the money he got from it is a small portion of the cost incurred by Wislon. So whether he liked the changes or not, he'd have had to make do.

I hope that is now history and that the racket change issues are just speculation. But I think it was important to notify the importance of such move.

if in doubt of the credibilit of the argument, We could recently read in Rafa's blog, who should be less inclined to suffer from those kind of changes due to the nature of his game, how panicked he was when he found out that they had shipped the wrong gauge of strings and that all his shots had lost precision. I think that happened in Madrid or Shangai.