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Roger Federer and the weak era myth

1st June, 2018
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Roger Federer, of Switzerland, in a fourth-round match against Philipp Kohlschreiber, of Germany, at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York, Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Roar Guru
1st June, 2018
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Roger Federer, 20-time grand slam winner, will be seen in action once the clay-court season is over. Considering that Federer won his first grand slam when he was 22, it is incredible that at 37 he is not just a contender but among the favourites.

Federer’s breakthrough grand slam win was at Wimbledon in 2003, where he defeated Andy Roddick and Mark Philippoussis in the semis and the final. The next year he won three grand slams to be the first player since Mats Wilander in 1988 to win three majors in a single year.

The 2004 season also saw him achieve world number one for the first time and in the period from 2004 to 2007, he won 11 majors. Federer’s domination of world tennis led to this period being called a ‘weak era’.

Why a ‘weak era’? The two main reasons are his winning 11 out of 16 grand slam titles against various ‘weaker’ contenders and overall having ‘weak’ competition such as Marat Safin, Andy Roddick, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Lleyton Hewitt, David Nalbandian and Nikolay Davydenko. 

Let’s check out his grand slam final opponents. In 2004 he won against Safin, Roddick and Hewitt. In 2005 he won against Roddick and Andre Agassi, while he lost to Rafa and Safin in the semi-finals. In 2006 he won against Marcos Baghdatis, Roddick and Rafa and lost to Rafa. In 2007 he defeated Fernando Gonzales, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic and lost to Rafa yet again.

Now let us analyse Federer’s performance against these players.

Safin, incidentally the tallest ever world number one, handed Federer a defeat in the 2005 Australian Open, one year after losing to Roger. Thereafter Federer won each of their next three matches in the majors in straight sets, suggesting that he had the measure of the giant Russian.

It is also pertinent that Safin has won US Open, defeating Pete Sampras, and the Australian Open, defeating Lleyton Hewitt. He also helped Russia to two Davis Cup titles, which shows he in his own right was a strong player. His destruction of Sampras at the US Open in 2000, against whom he has a positive 4-3 head-to-head, also shows he certainly is not a weak player.

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Roger Federer

(Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

Roddick had a skewed 3-21 record versus Federer. However, interestingly, the first major they met at was the 2003 Wimbledon, where it was Roddick who was the favourite. Even in 2004 Roddick was expected to be an even contender. However, Federer destroyed him and took an unassailable psychological edge. Otherwise Roddick was certainly not a weak player, which is seen by his positive 5-4 head to head versus Novak Djokovic, including four straight wins from 2009 to 2010.

Hewitt had become the youngest number one in the world in 2000 before he was 21. The 2001 US Open champion and 2002 Wimbledon champion led Australia to two Davis Cups wins before he was 23. Hewitt in fact had a 7-2 head to head against Federer before Roger upped his game and won 16 of the next 18 matches to finish their career at 18-9.

Interestingly, Hewitt won two of their last three matches, which shows that he was not a poor player, but Federer had read and analyzed his game to outclass him. The Hewitt-Rafa rivalry has the same pattern, with Hewitt winning four of his first five matches before Rafa won the next six for a 7-4 career head-to-head. Between 2004 and 2007 Hewitt defeated Rafa twice at the Australian Open and lost once at the French Open.

Agassi and Novak need no mention, and before we come to Baghdatis and Gonzales, lets quickly discuss a few of his other competitors in that period.

roger-federer-tennis-australian-open-2017

(The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images)

David Nalbandian and Roger Federer ended up with an 8-11 career head to head. David won their first five matches, including two grand slam matches. Federer then pulled ahead and won 11 of the next 14, including one match each at the four majors. Nalbandian had defeated Federer at both Australian as well as the US Open prior to 2004-07, and in this period Federer won all their four grand slam matches.

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At the 2005 year-end tournament David was the winner. So how was he a weak opponent? In fact if one were to see the Nadal-Nalbandian match up, one sees that Rafa lost his first two matches in 2007 and then won five in a row. The pattern is the same, a great player initially losing to a tough opponent and then mastering him.

Nikolay Davydenko is a player most popularly quoted as the weak opponent faced by Federer during the ‘weak era’. Federer defeated him 12 times in a row, including two US Open and one Roland Garros semi-final. Davydenko then won two matches against Federer and then lost his final seven against the Swiss magician.

Nikolay-Rafa makes for an interesting study. Apart from Djokovic, Davydenko with 6-5 is the only player who has played more than ten matches against Rafa with a positive head to head. Rafa won four matches on clay and one on hardcourts and lost six matches on hard courts to Nikolay. The 1-6 on hardcourt certainly enhances Federer’s two wins at the US Open semi-finals.

Against Ferrero, Federer lost three of his first five matches, then won eight consecutively, which shows that he took his time, then sorted out Ferrero. In this period of 2004 to 2007 Ferrero has two wins against Nadal and these are his only two wins versus Rafa in a 2-7 head-to-head. This shows he certainly was not a weak opponent.

Roger Federer hits a ball at the US Open.

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

We now come to Baghdatis and Gonzales. Is two finals out of 16 enough to label an entire era weak? Certainly not. Moreover, before defeating Gonzales, Federer had defeated Novak and Roddick in the same tournament.

Similarly, to reach the final Baghdatis had defeated much higher ranked players like Roddick and Nalbandian and dangerous floaters like Radek Stepanek and Justin Gimelstob.

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Pertinent to mention is that Nalbandian reached the semi-finals by defeating Fabrice Santoro 7-5, 6-0, 6-0. Santoro in the circuit was considered a dangerous player as he had defeated top-ten players 40 times, which is a record for any non-top-ten player. This shows the form Nalbandian was in, and Baghdatis defeating him was highly creditable, but the great Roger Federer awaited.

The main point about ‘weak era’ has therefore been addressed that opponents were actually not weak but due to vastly superior level of play Federer got the better of them, even in the case of those players who were defeating him earlier.

roger-federer-rafael-nadal-tennis-australian-open-2017

(AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Further, how can any era which has Rafa Nadal in it be a weak one? In 2004 in their first meeting Rafa defeated Federer at Miami. In 2005 he took a two-set lead at Miami but Federer recovered to win the match in five sets. Rafa defeated Federer at the French Open in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2006 and 2007 they met in eight finals, with Rafa winning in seven.

In fact Rafa had an early 8-4 career head-to head lead by mid-2007, and Federer’s win in Wimbledon 2007 – a hard-fought five-set win – and Masters Cup 2007 decreased it to 8-6. Therefore Rafa being very much part of 2004-07 shows it was not a weak era.

Logically, if 2004-07 was a weak era, Federer should have had a longer winning streak than those of champions in other periods. Well, Federer’s longest streak was 41 matches in 2006-07 which, along with Bjorn Borg’s 41-match streak in 1980, is only the joint fifth-longest winning streak in tennis history. Gullermo Vilas (46 in 1977), Ivan Lendl (44 in 1981-82), Novak Djokovic (43 in 2011-12 and Borg (43 in 1978) and John Mcenroe (42 in 1984) have longer streaks. The weak era logic does not succeed on this point too.

Roger Federer

(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

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Now, let’s have a look at players who have defeated Federer in the 2004-07 period.

I propose a detailed analysis for 2004 and a brief look at the other three years. The first to defeat Roger in 2004 was Tim Henman who had won six of his first seven matches against Federer before Roger won the next six. Federer also lost to 2002 French Open champion Alberto Costa in the second round of Rome Masters and to three-time French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten at Roland Garros.

Thereafter Slovakian Dominic Hrbaty upset him in the first round of Cincinnati Masters while Tomas Berdych won against him at the Athens Olympics. An important win in the year was over Guillermo Coria at Hamburg, which ended the clay court giant’s 31-match winning streak.

In 2005 Federer lost to Marat Safin (Australian Open), Richard Gasquet (Monte Carlo), Nadal (French Open) and David Nalbandian (Masters Cup). In 2006 Nadal won at the Dubai Open, Monte Carlo, Rome and the French Open. He lost to Andy Murray in Cincinnati.

In 2007 his loss to Guillermo Canas snapped a 41-match run. He also lost to Nadal (Monte Carlo and French Open) and to Filippo Volandri (Rome). Notably he defeated Rafa at the Hamburg finals to end Rafa’s run of 81 consecutive wins on clay.

Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina has defeats Roger Federer.

(Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

Thus analysis of losses shows that apart from losses to the peerless Rafa and to champions like Kuerten and Costa, he has lost even to relatively unknown players like Volandri and Hrbaty. This shows that in competitive tennis one needs to be at peak of performance all the time in each and every match. It also shows that while wins are taken for granted, they actually are not as easy as they seem.

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Interestingly, way back in 2006, Roger Federer had been asked what he thinks of the people who say his wins in the slams were due to weak competition. Roger replied, “To all those people I say pick up a racket and play against Nalbandian, Ljubicic, Safin or Moya. Domination is not about poor competition, it’s about making the difficult look easy”.

Just as Rafa’s domination on clay is not because it is a weak clay-court era but because he plays better than his opponents. Similarly Federer, at peak of his powers, won in 2004-07 because he was better and not because it was a weak era. There were lesser grand slam champions in that era not because they were not good enough but because he did not allow them to become champions.

To conclude, the era was not weak, but Federer, with immaculate level of tennis, got the better of most opponents. Even after 11 years of the era discussed the King is still around, ranked two in the world and competing to win.

Hence 2004-07 was not a weak era; it was a transitional era in which he seized the opportunity to not just win several grand slam tournaments and reach the number one rankings but establish a domination over his worthy competitors.

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