On the eve of the Australian Open, can Roger Federer remember how to be great?

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The Trouble With Rog
On the eve of the Australian Open, can Roger Federer remember how to be great?

By Louisa Thomas on January 10, 2014




There was a time when watching Roger Federer shank the ball gave me a little thrill of pleasure. Not jealousy's pleasure in pain — just the opposite. When Federer framed the ball, it seemed like an interesting quirk, the kind of mistake that affirmed just how gobsmackingly great he was. His swing produced so much speed, his racket had such a small sweet spot, his targets were so precise, and the array of angles he exploited was so vast that the tiniest mistiming could produce catastrophic results. You take something for granted until you're reminded just how fragile it is, how rare it should be. It was basically impossible, what Federer did almost all the time: making perfectly clean contact with a spinning ball approaching at different trajectories and at crazy speeds, and then sending his shot — chosen from the biggest range of options the sport had ever known — to a deliberate spot, a target maybe a few square inches, and hitting that mark more often than not. So when he mishit the ball, he sometimes missed big. He'd elevate in his split step a nanosecond too long, or his footwork would float him just a few millimeters too close to the ball, or a lump of clay would imperceptibly skew the angle of the ball's bounce, or a butterfly in Tokyo flapped its wings and produced a slight atmospheric disturbance in Queens, and the ball would thwack off his frame and sail out. It was delightful. That's how hard it is to do what normally looks so easy, I'd think. That's how great he is.

A few years ago, when people started to talk about Federer in funereal terms, they usually talked about how often he shanked the ball. There wasn't much else to talk about at that point, of course, besides the plain fact of his age; he was still at least the third-best player in the world, and in some conditions and on some days the very best, and he still moved around the court with that easy grace and awesome command, the kind of preternatural authority that makes me half-believe in the divine right of kings. But it was true, Federer was shanking the ball more often, on the forehand as well as the backhand. The mishits started to seem more worrisome than charming. Then they became downright embarrassing. Last year, when he really did begin to struggle, and not only by Federerian standards, the framed balls were what I'd remember when he lost a match, and what I'd try to forget.

When his losses and near-losses were raked over, the mishits were obsessed over. There had to be an explanation. Federer was having trouble reading shots coming off his opponent's rackets, you would hear. Or his famously fluid footwork had become less efficient and quick. Or a back injury was affecting the rotation of his torso. Or he was standing up on his shots. Or he'd lost his confidence and his cool, and so his consistency. Or his racket was too small. He used a 90-square-inch frame with a tiny, punishing sweet spot, while everyone else had a more merciful and powerful oversize frame. It was like taking a flintlock pistol to a duel against a guy with an assault rifle! It was like using a fax machine to send an email! Or something. Last summer, Federer did switch to a 98-square-inch model, a prototype from Wilson. The shanks — and the losses to obscure players — didn't stop, and the racket was shelved for the rest of the year, until he could work with it in the offseason. ..............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10273456/roger-federer-prepares-australian-open-end-career