After Roger Federer bowed out in straight sets to number 19 seed Tommy Robredo in the fourth round of the US Open, many are questioning how much the former world number-one has left in the tank. Federer has only captured one title during his 2013 season, his lowest count since 2001.
Junior Chris Nacea remarked that he remembers always watching him “win all the Grand Slams when [Nacea] was younger.”
Federer captured 17 Grand Slam titles, a professional tennis record, from 2003 to 2012 but failed to advance to the Finals of any Grand Slam in 2013 with his defeat at the US Open.
Federer’s Grand Slam failures were most notably marked by his uncharacteristically early defeat at Wimbledon to unranked Sergiy Stakhovsky in five sets. Federer was “playing like a shell of his former self,” sophomore Naveen Krishnan remarked, also adding that “this is not the same player who didn’t lose on grass for five years.”
He only has one win against a top-10 player, Jo-Wilfred Tsonga, so far this season and has been slotted in as low as seventh on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour rankings.
Federer is already on the wrong side of thirty, but age is not the only cause for his fall from the top spot. Other top players such as Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have not only been consistently great, but are continuing to improve as Nadal captured two Grand Slams while Djokovic added one at the Australian Open. Even Andy Murray finally broke through and won at Wimbledon, becoming the first British man to win there in 77 years.
Federer still has a few years left if he can return to his form of old. Senior Sruthi Selvakumar remarked that a good way to return to his winning ways would be “to have a good showing at the Barclays ATP World Finals” and to “prove that he still is capable of competing with other top players.”
Either way, the next tour season will prove to be huge for Federer. He will have to figure out a way to turn it around by the Australian Open next year. Otherwise, we may have just seen the end of a legacy.