Why did Federer lose today ?

First topic message reminder :

Since no-one had the balls or the racquet to put up a thread dedicated to the Gods demise, I though it fitting that a Murray fan should bask in the fallen angels light so quickly extinguished by a Journeyman today.

Ahh, sorry about that, couldn't stop myself.....ahem....start again.....what I wanted to say, seriously is, what did happen to Roger today ?

People have said he played OK and Good and Fine, but that is not the Federer we saw playing on Monday. What I saw was an old man trying to run down balls that he would have got two days ago.

Was it energy levels down, maybe time had caught up with him momentarily today or was it a lack of conviction, knowledge that he is vulnerable and that younger players are just quicker, that's it. He was slower than usual, not getting into position as he could do normally and it seemed as though time had slowed him down but not Stakky.

This is not a thread to find excuses and commiserate with him and his fans or smirk at his loss, but a thread to ask questions of what happened and does it have a short term affect or long term. As quickly as former pros were writing off Nadal, I don't hear the same song from them about Roger, do they see it differently, that a current player who is capable of winning slams, gets beaten early in the event but the two are somehow disconnected from Clairevoyeurisms. (although they may have changed their tune in the last 2 hrs, I've been away from the telly that long)

My own opinion is that Roger ran out of steam, steam that would normally have gotten him through a game of that nature. Stak played his best tennis, the score line was very close and Roger nearly nabbed the 4th set, but was let down by a horrid backhand DTL, it almost looked like he wanted the whole thing to end there and then, but not, of course.

Will he be back, I hope not, I don't want to see him go out like that again, but the tennis he loves so much will call out to him and he'll play devils advocate with fate as usual. I have a sneaky feeling we won't though, make no mistake, this was a humbling blow to Federer, his record of slam runs has ended, in spectacular fashion at the hands of a player he may well have thought to dare think beyond and as much as he played hard to stop the Stakky juggarnaut, at some point he must have seen the writing on the wall.

The end point, the deflation, the early walk back to the losers dressing room, is not something he is used to experiencing, will this be the catalyst that makes him slow down and think again, is this defeat as good as a debilitating injury ? what next for Federer ?

I fully know what statistics are JK dont you dare be as arrogant as to insinuate otherwise
But you are firing off your back foot because the discussion does not involve statistics... which as you well know can be manipulated to prove any point you want..
Just like your namesake you cannot be wrong can you  
Make Federer´s age HIS excuse.
Now get back to your statistics:picard:

Good post HM.

Also as to yesterday it must have an impact on Roger's thought process. Whereas before he was on a 36 run streak of slam quarters then in early round matches his belief he would win come what may was 100% but these defeats erode at self-belief. Next time he goes into such a match the self-belief will still be ultra strong but probably around 99% certain he will win. The more such like defeats the more percentage comes off that self- belief.

Haddie-nuff wrote:I fully know what statistics are JK dont you dare be as arrogant as to  insinuate otherwise
But you are firing off your back foot because the discussion does not involve statistics... which as you well know can be manipulated to prove any point you want..
Just like your namesake you cannot be wrong can you  
Make Federer´s age HIS excuse.
Now get back to your statistics:picard:

If you'd bother reading the statistics that I and others have posted on this site, about the distribution of GS slams title across players age, you'd know that > 90 % GS titles are won in between age 20 - 27 - Prime.

And that Ferrer performing stronger outside his prime is a stastical exception .

To be honest, I think Nadal's loss was a bigger shock than Federer's. I am not saying this from a Fed fan point of view but going on the last 6-10 months performances if he won this year it would have been a shock to me. That said after Nadal's exit I thought he has a good chance but I felt something would happen this year. Coming into this tournament Nadal had the momentum so that was a shock.

Listening to many opinions and what the papers say, an end of an era is a bit strong. I can imagine if Fed announced after the match it would be his last Wimbledon or something. These loses would increase as time went on. How long can you expect him to hang with the younger guys?

A month of good tennis around a slam could yeild another top prize. I can imagine if he got schooled 2/3/2 then you could say its the end but the match was practically 4 t/bs.

There is still something left in him. But as above, the motivational factors need to be established. To me after he lost the Olympics he was never the same player after that. He won cincy in great fashion without dropping a set or his serve the whole week but he seemed to be less enthusiastic. Perhaps breaking Sampras' No 1 record and the gold medal spurred him on and once he achieved what he could he lost interest.

I would like him to end with 18 I don't like odd numbers!

I would never write Roger off but the ageing process is irreversible. He isn't getting any younger and grass is his best surface so it may very well be next Wimbledon where his best chance lies and then he will be 33 with more battle scars and erosion of self- belief in his head. That is the stark reality I am afraid.

Because he was outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis

Jeremy_Kyle wrote:

Haddie-nuff wrote:I fully know what statistics are JK dont you dare be as arrogant as to  insinuate otherwise
But you are firing off your back foot because the discussion does not involve statistics... which as you well know can be manipulated to prove any point you want..
Just like your namesake you cannot be wrong can you  
Make Federer´s age HIS excuse.
Now get back to your statistics:picard:

If you'd bother reading the statistics that I and others have posted on this site, about the distribution of GS slams title across players age, you'd know that >  90 % GS titles are won in between age 20 - 27 - Prime.

And that Ferrer performing stronger outside his prime is a stastical exception .

Then THAT is statistics.

Both branches give solutions of a given relevant problem but mathematics define the structure & logic whereas statistics just gives the solution.

CaledonianCraig wrote:If there were countless shanks etc and netted volleys or whatever they count for unforced errors whatever style of tennis on show and there were very little unforced errors yesterday. Certainly not enough to claim Federer was 'far past his best'.

I get what you're saying here, and I agree that Federer played a good match. He looked a little sluggish, the timing was off and the return was poor, but that was nothing that we haven't already seen from him this year. As you say, despite that he still kept himself in the points and committed relatively few errors. He was forced into that position by an inspired opponent who deserves enormous credit, and ultimately couldn't dig himself out of the hole on this occasion. He had his chances, including a set point, but played far too tentatively and didn't back himself. I think he knew that the timing was off to an extent that he couldn't swing freely.

That being said, he still played a good match and as we know, it's still difficult to send Federer packing from a slam even now! Fantastic tennis, Stakhovsky was nearly faultless.

That said Craig, whilst I don't want to downplay the fact that Federer played a good match or take credit away from Stakhovsky, he was a long way past his best in my eyes. Even compared to early last year - still far removed from his peak - he looked very limited in his movement, particularly. He can still come back though, including at the USO where it's taken some genuinely beastly performances to stop him over the last four years.

Haddie-nuff wrote:It simples he lost the same way Rafa lost against Rosol.. or have you forgotten what that was.. He was out played by an inspired opponent who played the match of his life on the day ... it wasn´t what Federer didn´t do it was all about what Stahkovsky did do.  Thats what us Nadal fans have been told about Rosol for the last year and so all credit therefore must go to Stahkovsky

Bitterness is oh so contagious

Stakhov played well, Federer in his 2003-2007 hey days would have won in straight sets. He's 32 and wants tofocus on other goals like his family and charity business

legendkillarV2 wrote:Because he was outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis

His feet are not what they used to be

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:Because he was outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis

His feet are not what they used to be

Why have they shrunk?

legendkillarV2 wrote:

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:Because he was outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis

His feet are not what they used to be

Why have they shrunk?

Bit like Murray being outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis last year

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:Because he was outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis

His feet are not what they used to be

Why have they shrunk?

Bit like Murray being outplayed by an aggressive player playing old school grass court tennis last year

Indeed he was. Fail to see what that has to do with the thread.

In my opinion, Federer's biggest problem is his return game. His reflexes are just poor these days. I coudn't believe how many backhand returns he was miss hitting during yesterdays match.
Players seem to have no problem hitting aces against him. Let's take the Australian open semifinal against Murray. He allowed Murray to hit 21 aces past him! Yes Murray has a big first serve, but 21 aces? Come on, that's way too much.
Having said that, Stakhovsky played brilliantly and deserved the win. No need to take anything away from him. He was the better man on the day and outplayed Federer.

Good post Supervisor, Roger's return games as of late have left a lot to be desired of. Beyond getting aced a great deal when he does make contact he is often way too passive and simply chips a large number of returns back into play. This strategy worked well for 25 year old Federer who was as fast as a gazelle and could run all day, but at this age I think he cedes too much of the initiative.

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

Haddie-nuff wrote:It simples he lost the same way Rafa lost against Rosol.. or have you forgotten what that was.. He was out played by an inspired opponent who played the match of his life on the day ... it wasn´t what Federer didn´t do it was all about what Stahkovsky did do.  Thats what us Nadal fans have been told about Rosol for the last year and so all credit therefore must go to Stahkovsky

Bitterness is oh so contagious

Stakhov played well, Federer in his 2003-2007 hey days would have won in straight sets. He's 32 and wants tofocus on other goals like his family and charity business

There is a big difference Haddie, Federer is at 32 and Nadal was at prime when the result happened.

But is Nadal still in his prime ? We keep getting told that Federer was past his prime in 2008 when around the same age as Nadal is now. So is it one rule for one and one for another ?

Calder106 wrote:But is Nadal still in his prime ?  We keep getting told that Federer was past his prime in 2008 when around the same age as Nadal is now. So is it one rule for one and one for another ?

Well that means that Djokovic and Murray are past their prime too as they are both of a similar age to Nadal.

Calder106 wrote:But is Nadal still in his prime ?  We keep getting told that Federer was past his prime in 2008 when around the same age as Nadal is now. So is it one rule for one and one for another ?

Do you know the relative age of Nadal, Djokovic . Murray, Federer and Del Potro?

Of course I do but your statement that Nadal is in his prime at 27. Therefore are you saying that all those who say Federer was past his prime in 2008 when 26/27 are incorrect.

Calder106 wrote:Of course I do but your statement that Nadal is in his prime at 27. Therefore are you saying that all those who say Federer was past his prime in 2008 when 26/27 are incorrect.

Federer is way past his prime, Nadal is not in his prime either, we can say Nadal just out of his prime zone.

Just to add more details to make you understand the simple logic, Federer playing the game from almost 1997 and Nadal playing the game from 2004.

Fine with me, just being pedantic. If you are saying he is five years older I agree that's an indisputable fact.

Nadal begun playing in 2001.....

I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article on the reflexes of elite athletes being equal, heres an excerpt (link wont work):
Barry Bonds went down on three pitches, didn't
even swing. Albert Pujols and Mike Piazza couldn't
make contact. Paul Lo Duca, Larry Walker, Richie
Sexson, Dmitri Young: K, K, K, K. A-Rod took the
wise course and decided not to even step into the
box. The best any big leaguer fared against Jennie
Finch, the 6'1" former softball ace who took on
baseball players in 2005 on Fox's This Week in
Baseball, was Sean Casey's dink to the right side.
Coming from 43 feet away in the upper-60-mph
range, Finch's heater takes about the same time to
get to the plate as a mid-90s major league fastball.
Nothing unusual for the world's greatest hitters in
terms of speed. And yet big league players have a
history of feckless whiffing, against underhand
pitchers.
Beginning in the 1940s, softball pitcher Eddie
Feigner and his three position players, known as
The King and His Court, barnstormed the country
and showed up baseball players by winning four
against nine. In a 1964 exhibition at Dodger
Stadium, Feigner—the Meadowlark Lemon of the
team, hiding the ball and joking with the audience
—struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks
Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and
Roberto Clemente ... in a row.
Besides throwing between his legs or blindfolded,
both of which he did with surgical accuracy,
Feigner had another gambit: He usually steered
clear of softball players. In fact he'd sooner face a
Hall of Fame--bound baseball player than the local
beer league boys. "There were other softball
pitchers as good as Feigner," says Jerry Thomas,
dean of the University of North Texas College of
Education, who has studied expert athletes and
played against Feigner in a game in 1958. "But he
knew baseball players couldn't hit the softball.
People assume it's easier to hit because it's bigger.
But it comes from a different distance with a
different motion. He would strike out professional
baseball players from second base, but he usually
avoided playing softball teams."
The reason baseball players can hit 100-mph
fastballs but whiff at 70-mph softballs gets to the
heart of what it takes to intercept a speeding
projectile with a wooden stick. If hitting relied
simply on human reaction speed, it would not be
possible.
For the last three decades sports psychologists
have been assembling a picture of how elite
athletes hit 95-mph fastballs or return 150-mph
tennis serves. The intuitive explanation is that the
Ryan Howards and Rafael Nadals of the world
simply have faster nervous systems—quicker
reflexes, which give them more time to react to the
ball. But it turns out that when elite hitters, from
baseball and tennis to badminton to cricket, are
hauled into the lab, their reaction speeds are no
better than those of people chosen off the street.
In tests involving pressing a button in response to
a flashing light, most subjects—athletes and
nonathletes alike—take about 200 milliseconds, or
a fifth of a second. (You can test yourself online at
humanbenchmark.com) So, researchers conclude,
a fifth of a second is about the bare minimum
needed for the eye to take in information and
convey it by electrical impulse to the brain, and for
the brain to relay a message to the hands. "Once
that pitch reaches the last 200 milliseconds,"
Thomas says, "you can't change your decision
anymore. You're already swinging where you're
swinging—and a lot can happen in the last 200
milliseconds of a pitch."
Two hundred milliseconds is almost half the entire
flight time of a big league heater; the batter must
start his swing before the ball is halfway to home
plate. And given that the window for actually
making solid contact with a fastball is about five
milliseconds, or 1/200th of a second, it's a wonder
that anyone ever hits it. In fact, the only way to
accomplish it—the technique that separates the
expert from the amateur—is to see the future.
Bruce Abernethy was an undergraduate at the
University of Queensland in Australia and an avid
cricket player in the late 1970s when he started
wondering about the visual information employed
by top batters. He began shooting cricket bowlers
on Super 8 film and would then show test subjects
the film but cut it off before the throw and have
them try to predict where the ball was going. In
the decades since, Abernethy, a professor in the
School of Human Movement Studies at the
University of Queensland, has become exceedingly
sophisticated in his methods for so called
"occlusion studies"—tests that block part of the
thrower's or server's body, or that stop the motion
before it's finished.
Abernethy has put special goggles on tennis
players that black out their vision just before an
opponent serves the ball. He has shown cricket
batters video of bowlers with various parts of their
bodies deleted, and he has had batters wear
special contact lenses that blur their vision. The
idea is to determine how expert athletes intercept
projectiles and what information they need to do
so.

Part two:

Because top hitters react no faster, on average,
than the general population, the only way they can
hit the ball better is to anticipate where it's going
long before it gets there. Compared with lower-
level players, Abernethy found, pros can tell where
the ball is going much more accurately, much
earlier and with much less information. For
instance, top tennis players can tell from the pre-
serve movement of their opponent's body—
sometimes just tiny shifts of the torso—whether a
serve will be on their forehand or backhand.
Average players, in contrast, must wait to see the
motion of the racket, losing valuable time.
Abernethy has also found that when he deletes
everything but the hand, wrist and elbow of a
cricket bowler from a video, elite players in some
cases still see enough to determine where the ball
is headed. "There's significant information
between the hand and arm, where they get cues
for making judgments," Abernethy says. In
badminton, if he edits out the forearm and the
racket, top players are reduced nearly to novice
level, an indication that seeing the lower arm is
critical to decision making in that sport. And it
doesn't even matter if the arm doesn't look like an
arm. Top players still exhibited anticipatory
prowess when Abernethy replaced human joints
with points of light in digital simulations.
And yet, professional baseball players were unable
to touch Finch or Feigner even without any
perceptual impediments. That's because they
simply have not developed the mental data to
allow them to anticipate such unfamiliar
movements—a skill that comes only with years of
exposure and practice.
Before occlusion studies shed light on perceptual
expertise in sports (the first significant tests were
performed by Canadian researcher Janet Starkes
on volleyball players in 1975), studies of chess
masters were beginning to illuminate the
underlying processes. In famous experiments
starting in the 1940s, Dutch psychologist and chess
master Adriaan de Groot gave grandmasters and
club chess players five seconds to look at
chessboards with the pieces arranged in game
scenarios. Then the arrangement was taken away,
and De Groot had the players reconstruct the
board they had just seen. Grandmasters could
remember the position of nearly every piece, while
decent club players could reconstruct only about
half the board. De Groot and subsequent
researchers determined that the masters were
"chunking" information—rather than remember
the position of every piece separately, the
grandmasters grasped small chunks of meaningful
information, which allowed them to place the
pieces. We all use this strategy to an extent in daily
life. For example, while it would be difficult to
remember 15 random words, it's much less
difficult to remember a coherent 15-word
sentence because one need only recall bits of
meaning and grammar, which coordinate the
order of words in your head.
Moreover, to test whether the grandmasters' skill
is the result of game experience or prodigious
memory, psychologists have presented master and
club players with chess boards containing pieces
randomly arranged in a way that did not make
sense in the context of a game. In that
circumstance the experts' memories are no better
than the club players'.
What major league players and pro tennis and
cricket athletes seem to do is to synthesize and
group information about the human body based
on their playing experience. Give them unfamiliar
data, such as Jennie Finch's underhand pitching
motion, and the years they've spent taking mental
pictures of a pitcher's motion and the rotation of
the ball are less useful. The human chessboard
becomes suddenly more random, and the players
are left to react rather than to anticipate.
The same goes for quarterbacks. Peyton Manning
would probably have trouble recalling the exact
position of randomly distributed players in the
Colts' locker room, but show him those players
positioned on a football field, and he would be
better at recalling the arrangement because each
segment—the positioning of the defensive backs
relative to his receivers, for example—has an
underlying, unifying meaning for him. That's why
crafty defensive coordinators attempt to disguise a
defense: They try to forestall Manning's ability to
predict the future using cues from patterns he's
seen before.
Additionally, a quarterback, like a baseball batter,
does not have time to consciously analyze
everything he sees. Despite the fact that Manning
has spent thousands of hours breaking down film,
it's impossible for him to recall everything he's
seen in the video room. Instead, just as Ryan
Howard unconsciously marshals a lifetime of data
on pitchers' body movements, Manning processes
all that he knows about how defensive schemes
react to various offensive formations. If Howard or
Manning had to sort through what they had
previously seen in order to make a decision, he
would take too long and certainly fail. It has to be
automatic.
Brain-imaging studies have shown that when
people are first learning a skill such as driving a
car, they engage the higher-conscious areas of the
brain such as the cerebral cortex. But with
practice, the skill becomes automated and moves
to more primitive brain areas like the cerebellum.
Thus experienced drivers can maneuver a car with
far less active attention, at least until faced with
unanticipated obstacles. And quarterbacks can
choose where to throw while under pressure
without consciously thinking back on every
defensive arrangement they've ever seen.
Phillip L. Ackerman, a professor of psychology at
Georgia Tech who studies skill acquisition, uses a
military analogy to describe a quarterback's
decision-making process: "It's an if-then task. If
you recognize a certain pattern, you react to it. And
you have to do it without thinking about it. It's like
a soldier taking apart a weapon when it jams. You
learn it to the level where you can do it without
thinking, because people are shooting at you."

Part 3:
This science contradicts some of sports' hoariest
beliefs. The exhortation of every Little League
coach to "keep your eye on the ball"? Impossible.
"If you monitor the eyes of batters, the gaze stops
tracking the ball before they hit," Abernethy says.
"You don't have a visual system fast enough to
track the angular changes that occur over the last
few meters of the flight." Nonetheless, he says,
keep your eye on the ball is probably sound
advice, because it keeps your head still and
pointed in the right direction to gather the
necessary information from the pitcher's body.
"The real advice would be, 'Watch the shoulder,'"
Abernethy says, "but [even] that doesn't help. It
actually makes [players] worse." That's because
forcing an athlete to think consciously about an
automated task destroys his ability to anticipate
and puts him back in the realm of reaction.
Coaches who call timeouts to ice free throw
shooters and field goal kickers are trying to exploit
what researchers have codified: Break up the
routine; get the player thinking. University of
Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, author of the
book Choke, has demonstrated that, in golf,
pressure-induced poor putting can sometimes be
overcome with simple remedies such as singing to
yourself or counting backward by threes. For
automated tasks like putting or placekicking, mild
distraction, rather than intense concentration, may
be the best approach because it keeps the process
out of the higher-conscious areas of the brain,
where what Beilock calls "paralysis by analysis"
takes root.
Another implication of studies of expert athletes is
that pitching machines are probably rather useless
for developing the most important skills involved
in hitting. While they might be good for practicing
mechanics or developing strength, they fall short
in terms of sharpening the anticipation skills that
are needed to hit live pitching. "The machine is
completely predictable," Abernethy says, "which is
the antithesis of the natural task."
This may also explain why a pitcher with a strange
windup, like Hideo Nomo, could thrive in his rookie
season (2.54 ERA) but never touch that
performance in the years that followed. Hitters had
gathered sufficient visual data on his motion. The
importance of visual clues also explains why
Yankees closer Mariano Rivera is nearly impossible
to hit when he's on his game. Perry Husband, a
longtime hitting coach in California who has
studied millions of major league pitches, says
videos show that Rivera's motion for his cutter and
four-seam fastball are identical—as is the flight of
the ball three quarters of the way to the plate
(beyond the 200-millisecond line) before it breaks
to one side or the other of the strike zone.
"Everything he throws is lying to the hitter's eyes,"
Husband says.
And sometimes what the pitcher throws might lie
to more than the hitter. Among Eddie Feigner's
tricks was a pitch in which he would whirl his arm
in several directions before throwing from beh

thats long, and I apologize, the link wasnt working, so I had to paste it.

When I read that, I think of Nadal's match vs Rosol where he complained that Rosol was doing something with his hands on serve. Maybe Nadal was seeing something that stopped him from completing the "sentence" so to speak. I bring this up because I think SS had something in his serve that Federer couldnt figure it, and it cut out his return time.

King Raf you gave me headache scrolling down , what ever you wanna say please summarize it I will agree to it

I read your climax part, that seems interesting, whether a myth or not but something is made out of these two matches, but lets put it this way both the underdogs deserved the win and rightfully got it. , atleast for me my man is still there and doing the business in the chaotic week.

Haddie-nuff wrote:

Jeremy_Kyle wrote:At nearly 32 Federer is in the terminal stage of decline of a tennis player. That's not difficult to understand. Deny it is ignorance of the basics of tennis. On the other hand Nadal is supposed to be at the end of his prime. But: experience teaches that players with similar style of Nadal, on average, decline quicker. Brugera, Courier, Wilander, Chang were all gone at 26.

Ferrer hasn´t neither has Robredo. Prior to this Tournament there were many of you saying that Federer would win and that he has X amount of slams still left in him... what a difference a day makes

That's just stupid.

List who tipped him.

IC - sorry man, after Wimbledon Im going to write a thread with more detail dedicated to this idea.

@iC - here is the link - http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1188950

@KR... Let me know if this is not what you wanted to post.

Exactly the article, LF. Many thanks. Typing on my Galaxy right now, and it has a Sport's Illustrated phobia...

Haddie-nuff wrote:

Jeremy_Kyle wrote:At nearly 32 Federer is in the terminal stage of decline of a tennis player. That's not difficult to understand. Deny it is ignorance of the basics of tennis. On the other hand Nadal is supposed to be at the end of his prime. But: experience teaches that players with similar style of Nadal, on average, decline quicker. Brugera, Courier, Wilander, Chang were all gone at 26.

Ferrer hasn´t neither has Robredo. Prior to this Tournament there were many of you saying that Federer would win and that he has X amount of slams still left in him... what a difference a day makes

Haddie unless it is in your dreams, can you kindly quote who said those stupid words that Fed is the favourite for the Wimbledon , coz that person should either have a good sense of humor or simply brainlessor know nothing about tennis and form.

laverfan wrote:@iC - here is the link - http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1188950

@KR... Let me know if this is not what you wanted to post.

Thx for the share LF and KR

invisiblecoolers wrote:

Haddie-nuff wrote:

Jeremy_Kyle wrote:At nearly 32 Federer is in the terminal stage of decline of a tennis player. That's not difficult to understand. Deny it is ignorance of the basics of tennis. On the other hand Nadal is supposed to be at the end of his prime. But: experience teaches that players with similar style of Nadal, on average, decline quicker. Brugera, Courier, Wilander, Chang were all gone at 26.

Ferrer hasn´t neither has Robredo. Prior to this Tournament there were many of you saying that Federer would win and that he has X amount of slams still left in him... what a difference a day makes

Haddie unless it is in your dreams, can you kindly quote who said those stupid words that Fed is the favourite for the Wimbledon , coz that person should either have a good sense of humor or simply brainlessor know nothing about tennis and form.

The only one who did it that I know is Red

Well exactly.......

It's just an excuse for Haddie to conjure up some moaning at people.