federer Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Don't Call This Vintage Federer, He's Got A Brand-New Weapon
INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—Forget any bluster about age, resilience, rehabilitation: The story here is that Roger Federer may have solved Rafael Nadal. It’s never too late to iron out your flaws, especially if you have only one to speak of....
The Quarter Of Death Is Shaping Up At Indian Wells
INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—Juan Martin del Potro is a teddy bear with a heavy brow and a shotgun forehand, and when he gets mad in public, apparently, he hugs whoever happens to be around. Because he is a professional tennis player that person is usually a line judge. That’s what he did in a fit of rage t...
The Best (Of Who's Left) At Indian Wells
INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—When you touch down in the desert in the middle of March, they pretty much know why you’re there. They plant a big-ass screen right at the arrivals gate and the tennis players loom nearly life-sized. That’s how it was possible to know, within 15 minutes of landing, that Andy Mur...
The Indian Wells Men's Draw Is One Big Clusterfuck
Today, out in the Coachella Valley, the Indian Wells Masters will begin. It’s the highest-profile tennis tournament in the world after the four Grand Slams, dropping a fat bounty of 1000 ranking points on its winners. Everyone in the tennis universe should be excited, except for Serena Williams and ...
Roger Federer Suffered "Stunning Loss To Donkey" In Dubai Championship
Roger Federer had a bad day. In his three-set loss to Russian qualifier Evgeny Donskoy in the second round of the Dubai Tennis Championships, he blew three match points in the second set, was up 5-2 in the third, somehow let Donskoy tie the set at six games apiece, was up 5-1 in the tiebreak, and th...
Roger Federer Is Just Making Stuff Up Now
Roger Federer is 35 and, increasingly, plays like he has no time to waste. That manifests in a very literal way: He barely waits for the ball to hit the ground. ...
Old Man Federer Signs New Deal, May Keep Playing Until Humanity Leaves For Mars
The saner Roger Federer fans treated his Australian Open title as a late-night dessert—one they really didn’t expect or deserve!—snuck in before the long sleep. The more delusional might have seen it as the beginning of a late-career resurgence, promising fresh titles to come. I sat somewhere in bet...
Science! Shows That Roger Federer's Backhand In Fact Defeated Rafael Nadal
Yesterday we argued that Federer’s unusually strong backhand anchored his Australian Open win over Rafael Nadal, and today we found a startling statistical basis for that claim. It comes courtesy of the always helpful Jeff Sackmann at TennisAbstract. Relative to other sports, tennis remains fairly d...
Roger Federer Played Free And Gave His Archrival The Back Of His Hand<em></em>
“I’m a different player due to Rafa’s presence,” Roger Federer said in a 2015 press conference, and if you needed it, yesterday’s 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 Australian Open win offered the clearest possible evidence. When your defensive-genius nemesis applies crushing pressure on you for more than a de...
Roger Federer Wins Australian Open For First Grand Slam Title In Five Years
Thirty-five-year old Roger Federer took down old rival Rafael Nadal in five sets to win the Australian Open—his 18th Grand Slam title, but his first in five years. ...
Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal Will Face Off In A Throwback Australian Open Final
This photo’s from 2005—they were about to meet in a Grand Slam for the first time, the 2005 French Open, a semifinal match Rafael Nadal won before claiming the title, his first of many. They’d then spend about a decade at the top of the game, sucking up all the available oxygen, dominating all major...
Old Man Federer Survives To Reach Australian Open Final
Thirty-five-year-old Roger Federer sputtered his way to the championship round of the Australian Open. Though his all-Swiss semifinal against Stan Wawrinka looked like a gutsy struggle on paper—five sets! 7-5, 6-3, 1-6, 4-6, 6-3!—it actually lasted just over three hours, and the two major inflection...
Now It's Just Rafael Nadal And A Bunch Of Gorgeous One-Handers
Rafael Nadal dug around and exploited two glitches in the Milos Raonic serving machine—two successfully converted break points, that is—to win his Australian Open quarterfinal 6-4, 7-6 (7), 6-4. And now he’s surveying a field full of the prettiest one-handed backhands in all the land. Roger Federer’...
Roger Federer Was Better Than Vintage
“It’s not so much fun,” said Tomas Berdych, the 10th seed at the Australian Open, after getting picked apart in a neat 92 minutes. “I would rather be in the stands watching than on the court.”...
Roger Federer Is Back, But The Youngsters Are Coming For Him
Lay out all the usual lame disclaimers: it’s Roger Federer’s first tournament back in the game since he hurt his knee giving his kids a bath and decided to take the whole rest of the season off. It’ll take him a while to get back to form, even his late-career, step-slower form. And the Hopman Cup is...
Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal Are Not In The Top Four For The First Time Since 2003<em></em><em></em>
Scroll through the ranking histories of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, skim over the mind-numbing string of No. 1's during Federer’s untouchable 2004-2008 run, and you might notice that you need to dig back to June 2003 to find a moment when neither Fed nor Rafa was among the top four players in th...
Roger Federer Will Miss The Rest Of The Season To Rehabilitate His Knee
When Roger Federer advanced to his 11th Wimbledon semi-final earlier this month, there was hope that he’d put his February knee surgery and injury plagued year behind him. But the knee is apparently still bothering him, and today Federer announced that he would miss the rest of the season, including...
Even Roger Federer Went Nuts Over This 27-Stroke Rally Between Maria Sharapova & Lauren Davis
American Lauren Davis has forced a third set against fifth seed Maria Sharapova at the Australian Open after winning a second-set tiebreak. That came despite her unforced error at the end of this remarkable 27-stroke rally—one that got Roger Federer, awaiting his turn against Grigor Dimitrov, out of...
Roger Federer Is Smooth
Looks like Fed’s still got it. (Well, “it” here being the ability to do cool though otherwise meaningless tricks with a racket.) Here’s the video of him turning his tennis racket into a lacrosse stick:...
Novak Djokovic Defends His Wimbledon Title With Win Over Roger Federer
Novak Djokovic claimed his third Wimbledon championship with a 7-6 (7-1), 6-7 (12-10), 6-4, 6-3 win over Roger Federer on Sunday. ...