A Legend in the Making... Review on Roger Federer

Roger Federer, the Number one Player in the World today is fast becoming one of the All-Time Greats of Lawn Tennis due to his amazing performances in the last 2-3 years.

He won the US Open Title on Sunday night defeating one of the legends of the game-Andre Agassi in a hard fought match of four sets though I was expecting a 5-Sets match considering the fighting spirit shown by Agassi as he won the last 3 matches in 5-sets duals. The kind of emotion Roger showed has never been seen on court from him, it showed how much this title meant to him considering he defeated Agassi.

In 2004 he became the first player since Mats Wilander to win three Grand Slams out of the four in the same year. In 1999 he made his Debut on the ATP Tour and finished in the top-100 players and was the youngest player to do so. In 2001 he won his maiden ATP Title in Milan. He showed his greatness for the first time on the World Stage when he defeated Pete Sampras in 2001 Wimbledon Fourth Round and finished that year ranked 13th.

In 2002 and 2003 he showed respectable performances and slowly moved up the ATP Rankings.

The year 2004 clearly belonged to him without doubts. First he won the Australian Open title, and then followed it with victories in US Open and Wimbledon. The US Open Final with Lleyton Hewitt was clearly the most one-sided Final played in the Open Era, he annihilated him 6-0, 7-6 & 6-0 and finished the year gloriously. His year-end record was 74 wins and only 6 losses with 11 tournament wins.

2005 has been also good for him though not as good as 2004 in terms of Grand Slam victories. He lost in the Semifinals of Australian Open (to Marat Safin) and French Open (to Rafael Nadal) both of who were the winners of those tournaments. But he won the Wimbledon defeating Andy Roddick comfortably. His current record in 2005 has been 71 wins and 3 losses with 10 titles. He is slated to play 6 more tournaments this year.

His superiority is clearly visible by observing the ATP Rankings, his points are 1010 and the second ranked Rafael Nadal has only 838 points, a huge gap of 172 points, which I am sure Nadal wont be able to bridge.

In total he has won 6 Grand Slam titles, 32 Singles Titles and 7 Doubles Titles.

He was born on 8th August 1981 in Switzerland and his idols are Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker and I am sure he would not only emulate them and easily surpass them in terms of achievements.

The best thing I like about Federer is that he is such a cool and collected player on court and is the perfect ambassador of Tennis on the World Stage just like Pete Sampras, I have never seen him being over-aggressive on the court or abusing players or officials.

The way Andre Agassi is known for his Service Returns and Double-Handed backhanded play, Pete Sampras was known for his Serve and Volley game, Roger Federer would be known for his single handed Backhand shots which are more of swipes or rips which he unleashes whenever he finds an opportunity, he is not a great volley player but in terms of percentage this aspect of game is fast-improving.

Another impressive quality of Federer is that he always competes in the Davis Cup unlike many other players who don’t like to represent their respective countries, as it doesn’t bring the kind of money ATP Tour events pays. He has also helped Switzerland to reach the World Group Stage for the last 3 years.

The only weakness in his game is that he at times becomes complacent and unnecessarily the match becomes tough due to his unforced errors. This was best seen in last year’s US Open final with Lleyton Hewitt.

Today Andre Agassi has given a Press Statement that Federer is a better player than Sampras as he has played both of them quite a lot and I am sure in the years to come he would beat Pete Sampras’ record of most Career Grand Slam wins and would be one of the all-time greats…as he is only 24 years old and have loads of time on his hand.

Hope this review was useful to you all…