Federer Skipping French Open and rest of clay season

Federer was asked about the clay season and he said "I decided not to play" and then a journalist asked him a follow up question to explicitly confirm that he would not play the French Open and he confirmed that he would not play the French Open. You can see this in the video below. Most media organizations are not including the exact quotes and not reporting this properly but you can see it in a video here.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2766437-roger-federer-will-not-play-french-open-after-upset-loss-at-miami-masters-open

I thought it was a perfectly reasonable follow up to a vague statement and he was a bit of a dick in his response. If I were a sports journalist, I would hate doing interviews and pressers.

Anyway, the race for year end no 1 is wide open at this point, you could potentially see the winner having quite a low total if Federer doesn't have a good rest of the season.

Miami pretty open as well.

Never been a huge fan of the quirk in the ranking system that causes players to get back no 1 while going out early in tournaments or not even playing. We may even see this situation again in the clay season.

Rafa has 1000 points to defend at Monte Carlo, and 100 points lead before the tournament, so it looks like he has to defend that tournament.

Then he has 1000 at Madrid to defend, Rome he can gain because he lost in the QF, then he has the French Open to defend.

If Rafa is fit, you could see a situation where the no 1 changes hands a few times while Federer sits on the sidelines.

Don't think there was ever a chance of Fed playing the clay-court season. May be if he'd gone out early at the AO and at IW, there might have been a chance. But with more than 3,000 points already in the bag for this year, he will now concentrate on Wimbledon and the second half of the season.
   Rafa has never really had a bad clay-court year, although 2015 was comparatively poor. Even in 2011 when he kept losing to Djoko, it was in finals. The one Fed victory I've always regretted was the semi that year at RG. I'm convinced that Djoko would have gone on to beat Rafa in the final - but it was not to be and what could have been an amazing match never happened.

sirfredperry wrote:Don't think there was ever a chance of Fed playing the clay-court season. May be if he'd gone out early at the AO and at IW, there might have been a chance. But with more than 3,000 points already in the bag for this year, he will now concentrate on Wimbledon and the second half of the season.
   Rafa has never really had a bad clay-court year, although 2015 was comparatively poor. Even in 2011 when he kept losing to Djoko, it was in finals. The one Fed victory I've always regretted was the semi that year at RG. I'm convinced that Djoko would have gone on to beat Rafa in the final - but it was not to be and what could have been an amazing match never happened.

Yes a Djokovic v Nadal final at RG in 2011 would have been something.

Likely Djokovic would have won, but we will never know.

Nadal would have beaten Djokovic at RG in 2011, in the same way he beat him in 2012 (final), 2013 (semi-final) and 2014 (final). There is no evidence to suggest that in 2011 Djokovic would have been favorite against Nadal on the clay of RG.

NNB. Rafa might well have beaten Djoko in that 2011 final. But it should be remembered that Djoko had repeatedly beaten Rafa in the first part of the year, not only at IW and Miami but at Madrid and Rome as well.
   If there was any year that Rafa might have failed to win the French it was 2011.

I am not convinced.   Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros is a completely different ball game.  Yes Djokovic had a fantastic 2011 - one of the best seasons on record, but he still lost in four sets to Roger Federer at RG and then Federer was well beaten by Nadal in the final.  We can agree to disagree because it is not part of any reality (what is called counterfactual history).  I would be interested in knowing what were the betting odds at the start of the French Open 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Novak_Djokovic_tennis_season
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_French_Open_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_Singles