The Federer story: Ups, downs, injuries and more

We will talk about Cincinnati. And how Roger Federer should have taken the match into the third set against Novak Djokovic. But first we will retrace steps to March, when Federer was still smiling. And so were his fans.

The Swiss conjurer had won 17 matches on the trot at that point; his best ever start to a season. In January, he had won the Australian Open, his 20th major. In March, at Indian Wells, a tournament second in importance only to the majors, he was a point away from defeating Juan Martin del Potro. The bubbly was on ice.

And then Federer started to unravel.

A match that seemed a done deal ended in defeat. It was agonising to watch. A convincing defeat is easier to accept. Losing from winning or competitive positions is torture. Sadly, that has been a pattern this year with Federer. In the Wimbledon warm up in Halle, a tournament he had won nine times, he was a point away from winning the first set against big-hitting youngster Borna Coric. He lost.

Over to Wimbledon, his backyard, where he had eight titles. (Elizabeth Taylor married eight times. Federer wins tournaments seven-eight times, rarely one or two.) The quarterfinal against Kevin Anderson of South Africa was heading towards a routine win for Federer. He had matchpoint, even. You stopped tracking the match on the phone and began your commute. When you checked the score sometime later, the match had not yet finished.

Federer, sublime and ridiculous rolled in one, had found a way to lose set three, set four. And then he lost set five too. Now Cincinnati. It was his first tournament after Wimbledon. He did extremely well to get to the final. A win over Djokovic would have been a huge boost for him before the US Open.

Federer looked crisp in the early stages. But Djokovic eked out the first set on the back of characteristic defensive play. Federer was still in the fight, though. And when he broke Djokovic in the second set, it seemed likely the match would go into the third set. By which time, we dreamed, Federer would be fully on fire and a swirling dervish on court, painting aces and forehand winners and bellowing ‘chum jetze!’.


Instead, Federer gave it away, as he did in Indian Wells, in Halle, at Wimbledon, in Timbuktu…oh forget it. Yet another match and opportunity was gone. And great as he is, at 37 he isn’t going to get many more.

Jimmy Arias was a teenage tennis prodigy in the 1980s. He had a few hot years, and then he vanished. This is what he once said. “When you are on a roll, you stay on it. Until something happens.”

Federer has rolled for years. Often he has stumbled along, battling poor form, injuries, great rivals, equipment technology that helped the opposition more than him. But now the “something” that Arias said seems to be happening.