Roger Federer the Mystery Man with New Racket and MIA at 2013 Rogers Cup

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: August 9, 2013

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As the top players kick off their U.S. Open Series campaigns in Montreal this week, one name is notably missing from the draw: Roger Federer.

Federer, who won the Rogers Cup in 2004 and 2006, withdrew from the tournament for personal reasons, but most have speculated that his absence has to do with the back injury he's been struggling with this year. 

This marks the first time Federer has missed this Masters event in a non-Olympic summer since 2005. It is yet another perplexing chapter in what's been quite the out-of-the-ordinary summer for the Swiss great.



After his shocking second-round loss to Sergiy Stakhovsky at Wimbledon, Federer was left searching for answers. While a run to the Wimbledon title had quieted doubters in 2012, there was simply nowhere to hide after this year's early exit.

And so, Federer did what he hasn't had to do many times in his storied career: He went back to the drawing board. 

Soon after Wimbledon, he announced that he was going to play Hamburg and Gstaad, two small clay-court events between Wimbledon and the U.S. Open Series. This was the first time he'd played that time of the year in nearly a decade.  

This seemed like a good sign at first—Federer felt healthy enough to add tournaments to his schedule and motivated enough to try to regain his top-four ranking, which had slipped away from him after Wimbledon.

But then he dropped an even bigger bomb—he was going to be playing with a new racket.



For years, Federer had stubbornly and emphatically held onto his 90-inch racket frame, despite the fact that most of his contemporaries were playing with a much larger surface area. But finally, he was ready to join the century with a 98-inch frame.

Things started out okay in Hamburg, as he shook off the rust on his way to the semis. Though, as expected, there was an adjustment period, th...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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