Has Roger Federer finally passed his peak this year?
Answer from Simon Reed - Head tennis commentator for British Eurosport
YES
Roger Federer is not the player that he was and I don't think that his dominance in world tennis, other than on grass, will continue. On other surfaces he has lost the invincibility he seemed to have a few years ago. There is a finite time when you can dominate and I have seen signs from some of Federer's defeats this year that he can no longer do so. For example, his defeat by Mardy Fish at Indian Wells in March was strange and he lost to Andy Murray when Murray was not playing well.
Federer has been picked off here and there all year and even though you would accept being beaten by Rafael Nadal on clay, the way that he succumbed in the third set of the French Open final at Roland Garros suggested even he does not believe he is the dominant force that he was and I would be surprised if he regains that status.
I don't think anyone can really predict how that will affect his game on grass at the moment — I can't pick between him or Nadal to win the Wimbledon title this year. But if Federer does get beaten then we know his era is at an end. And if he doesn't win Wimbledon, I would be surprised to see him win another grand slam. At the moment he arrives at Wimbledon feeling he has a psychological edge on grass which helps him to beat everybody else. Once he loses that it will be one heck of a feat to come back and win other grand slams.
On the other hand, it was a considerable achievement to win the grass-court title in Halle a week after losing to Nadal in the French final. The people who he beat were not of the same calibre as Nadal's victims at Queen's, but to come back from that kind of drubbing in Paris in the way that he did was very special.
In some respects he has been hoist by his own petard. He set the bar so high that Nadal and Novak Djokovic knew what they had to do to improve their game. Certainly Djokovic may not have been the player he is without Federer. The challenges to Federer have always been there but they haven't been of the same calibre that they are now: Andy Roddick, for example, is a terrific competitor but is a more limited player who is not in the same class as Djokovic.
Of course, judging if Federer is in decline is complicated by the illness he suffered at the start of the year. It may be that we are judging him too quickly because only he can know how severely glandular fever affected his game. But from what I see he has certainly lost the edge on every surface besides grass.
British Eurosport 2 has live ATP Tour coverage this week from the Ordina Open in the Netherlands and the Slazenger Open from Nottingham
Answer from David Felgate - Former LTA performance
NO
I find it amazing that people are writing Roger Federer off . The improvement of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic is great for the men's game but it is incredible when people are talking negatively about Federer. He is the world No1, he reached the semi-final of the Australian Open this year when he was not at 100% because of illness and he reached the final of the French Open, only losing to one of the greatest claycourters of all time.
He also reached the final in Monte Carlo and the final in Hamburg. So what we can say about him after the last few weeks is that he is the second best clay-court player in the world, who recovered from defeat at Roland Garros to win his 59th game in a row on grass when taking the Halle tournament a week later without dropping his serve. So although Rafa continues to improve his grass-court game, Federer is still the favourite to win his sixth Wimbledon title.
If we were debating this after Wimbledon and something dramatic happened then I might have to revise my opinion, but at the moment I cannot agree that his career has plateaued. I am sure it was the emphatic nature of his defeat by Rafa at Roland Garros that has made people question his game but you have to remember that there were plenty of people who said beforehand that this would be his year to win in Paris.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see Rafa become the world No1. I guess in a year the rankings could read Nadal, Djokovic and then Federer, but equally I wouldn't be surprised to see Federer still there; there's a real battle going on. It is great to be No1 but, for each of these guys, first and foremost it is about winning grand slams. If Federer finished No2 in the world but won Wimbledon I think he would be happy. It is impossible to sustain the kind of dominance that he had in the game forever but a levelling out in the world rankings will not aff ect his ability to win a grand slam necessarily.
Is Federer vulnerable where he wasn't before? I think inevitably when you beat somebody you believe you can beat them again. But the point is that he is still the man to beat in every tournament bar the French Open. I am sure Rafa believes he can win Wimbledon this year but I wouldn't think Roger is worried ahead of the tournament. He has won it five times in a row, after all.
It is pure supposition trying to guess whether Federer can raise his standards again but professionals are always looking at their games and tweaking them to improve so there is no reason to suppose he cannot or will not do that.
This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday June 18 2008.
