Back in April of 2011 I predicted that Roger Federer would never
be #1 in the world again. Let me tell you, I’ve taken a lot of heat since he
became #1 after winning Wimbledon this year in 2012.
I gave my 5 reasons for why Roger Federer would never be #1. And
of course when he did become #1 everybody jumped on YouTube, I should say a lot
of people jumped on YouTube to tell me how wrong I was.
And in this case, I want to go through the reasons why I was
wrong.
First of all, I said that he was older and that is a common theme
in today’s game. As you get older, usually you decline. Just look at a guy like
Andy Roddick, he’s getting older and he’s not playing as well.
But, really, what it comes down to, it’s not really age.
Oftentimes it’s that commitment level and it’s that focus on training and
getting the right people around you. And I think that’s what Roger has the past
year and a half.
At the time that I said that he would never be #1 again, he had
hired Paul Annacone about four to six months prior, actually back in August of
2010. They had been together for about six months.
And, really, it took him about a year and a half to two years to
get Paul Annacone’s voice inside of his head to do more things – the chip and
charge that he used at Wimbledon, moving forward more. That took some time to
implement because for the two years prior, he was without a coach and that’s what
I was noticing back in 2011. He didn’t quite have the direction that he needed.
So, that was one big shift that he made. He got great coaching and
he obviously was a hardworker before. But I have a feeling that Roger Federer
got in better shape than he was at the time that I made that prediction.
The other reason that I pointed out was that his family might, I
wouldn’t say distract him, but his priorities would shift now that he had two
children. The opposite has happened.
Many times, players have a family, a wife, a girlfriend, kids, and
then they start to think about what’s life like after tennis. And the ranking
drops and they end up moving on to other things in their life.
But Roger did the opposite. He actually surrounded himself with a
great team. His wife is very supportive and his kids are in the mix. They’ve
created a situation where they are actually together on this rather than him
feeling like he’s on the road playing tournaments when he’d rather be at home.
They’ve done a wonderful job as a family in making that happen.
I didn’t predict that. I thought that Roger had achieved
everything he needed to achieve and that he would start to focus more on maybe
being at home more, and that’s just not the case. I was completely wrong about
that.
In short, Roger Federer, I was wrong about you. I really
appreciate your work ethic, your commitment to the game, you being able to do
it with your family, you wanting to get better at a later stage in your career,
and getting a coach – that’s the big thing. He got Paul Annacone and I think
that was the magic bullet. That and his fitness level, those were the things
that helped him get back to #1 in the world and develop that consistency that
he had several years ago.
Check out what I have to say about Roger in this video about why I
was VERY wrong about him.
No comments:
Post a Comment