Roger Federer: Intimidation No Longer a Factor

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 14, 2010

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Before facing Andy Murray at the Australian Open this year, Federer stated, among other things, that Murray will have added pressure on him besides the obvious one of trying to win his first slam.

"He's playing, you know, me, who's won many Grand Slams prior to that," said Federer.

He also claimed that the British public have been waiting for a "150,000 years" for one of their own to land a Slam, as well as mentioning that some of his losses to Murray were kind of flukes.

These comments were clearly intended to get under the skin and into the mind of the brilliant, but still maturing and highly emotional young Scotsman.

Intimidation was Federer’s tactic, and it worked. Murray was at his most passive in the final compared to his earlier conquests. He started to play more freely by the third set tiebreak, but it was a case of too little too late.

Why did Federer feel the need for this kind of talk, in my opinion, the most abrasive and demeaning of his whole career (making his customary flippant remarks about some of his opponents seem tame)? I believe the answer stems from a year earlier and will be discussed later.

Federer is no longer the intimidating presence on a tennis court he once was, thanks in part to his losses this year at the hands of four players that were previously dominated by him—Marcos Baghdatis, Tomas Berdych, Robin Soderling, and most recently Lleyton Hewitt in Halle on Federer’s favored grass where he had not been defeated since 2002.

With the exception of Federer’s match with Soderling at the French Open, where the Swiss was almost blasted off the court by the power of the brutal Swede, and in a round before the semi-final stage of a Slam (the latter feat quite remarkable on its own), the other three encounters were engaging battles where Federer had chances to win, but did not.

Those matches showed that when Federer is eng...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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