Nobody is scared of Roger Federer anymore, not even a streaky, journeyman scrambler who’d dropped all 10 of his matches against the Swiss genius.
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| Roger Federer |
Federer is beatable and the others know it all too well, which only
makes him more beatable. He still has those elegant groundstrokes and
those brilliant angled volleys in his tennis bag somewhere, but Federer
is a quarter-step slower and there are too many misfires off that
oversized racket.
It isn’t only that Federer flubs shots he once made, though he often
does. He also tries to shorten points recklessly, to charge the net
against all odds, for fear of the 20-stroke rally and the four-hour
match.
So Tommy Robredo,
a crafty, 31-year-old Spaniard who had won exactly three sets off
Federer in their previous meetings, suddenly became an equal on
Armstrong Stadium on Monday evening. Better than an equal, in a 7-6 (3),
6-3, 6-4 upset in the fourth round that kept Federer from advancing to
his 10th straight U.S. Open quarterfinal
“I missed so many opportunities,” Federer said. “I kind of feel like I
beat myself, not taking credit away from Tommy. It was up to me to make
the difference and I couldn’t. I kind of self-destructed, which is very
disappointing, especially on such a fast court. When things came to
crunch I just couldn’t do it.”
At age 32, Federer has struggled with a bad back and experimented
with a larger racket head, and all along, he's had far more trouble
winning matches than he usually does - particularly against the sort of
players he barely broke a sweat against at his peak.
That this defeat came against Robredo made it all the more stunning.
Not that Robredo is a slouch. He's been ranked as high as No. 5, albeit
back in 2006, and this is his seventh trip to the quarterfinals at a
major. He made it that far at this year's French Open by doing something
no man had done since 1927, winning three matches in a row after
dropping the first two sets of each.
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