It was not a good period for Fedrer last year when he doubted that whether he would ever get back to full fitness following his knee injury, Roger Fedrer clung on to this thought and still at the back of his mind he has this that he had to get up and sneak another grand glam title on a high.
What Roger thought was absolutely right and the 35-year-old told the Australian Open website about how he got through the doldrums last year “There’s never a guarantee but I was always positive,” “It was about staying calm and believing the work’s paying off and that the variety I have in my game maybe allows me to maybe sneak in one or a couple.”
Federer said that his belief was also based on the fact that until his injury he was still competing well and reached two grand slam finals in 2015 and two semi finals in 2016. He further said “If you look back at my results, in 2016 and especially in 2015, I think I played some really good tennis and some good attacking tennis,” “Honestly I believed I could do it, the question was how’s Novak (Djokovic) going to play, how’s Andy (Murray) going to play, Rafa and everybody.
“I knew it was going to be hard because they’re not getting any worse and I am getting older so I don’t have much time.”
With Murray and Djokovic both going out before the quarter finals at Melbourne Park, Federer took his chance and gave his best by beating Kei Nishikori, Stan Wawrinka and then Nadal. Federer who had had promised to “party like rock stars” after the victory was bleary eyed when he turned up to the champions’ photo shoot in Melbourne on Monday.
Post match Federer said, “Waking up, I don’t know if I slept, even if I did sleep,” “I had to look at the highlights again to remember how close the match was again.” With this victory Federer climbed to 10th in the rankings after his win and added it was his self belief when he had been trailing 3-1 in the final set that had helped him to victory.
“I said to myself, ‘I’m all in’,” he said. “I still had the mindset that I had nothing to lose. “I think I was able to shuffle all those things around in my head and believe until the very end I could actually turn it around and the last four games were just epic, so I couldn’t be happier.”
