Former World No.1 Roger Federer had a torrid time on court in 2013 as he suffered from a recurring back injury all through the season which never allowed him to play as freely as he would have liked. The Swiss went on to admit that he made some grave mistakes in his schedule and the paid the price for it by losing to rank-outsiders like Daniel Brands and Federico Delbonis. The maestro said: “It was a very difficult year. It may have begun well with the semi-final in Australia, and it ended well. But it would be better to forget the months from March to October, despite the quarter-finals at Roland Garros and the win in Halle. My back problems began at Indian Wells in March; after the match against Ivan Dodig, I shouldnt have kept playing, the games against Stanislas Wawrinka and Rafael Nadal were too much. After that, I fell behind with my training and was unable to catch up again because my back problems soon returned. In the summer too, it would have been better to have given up in Hamburg and Gstaad. These problems cost me a lot of time and threw me off course.” On being asked whether 2013 was a lost year, Federer replied in the negative: “No year is lost. In the circumstances, it was actually an interesting season. Its no joke being injured, of course. But I had to get through it, I had to question everything. Along with the back problems, I had other setbacks of a kind I had seldom had in the previous ten years. But nonetheless it was an interesting experience – to see how different people reacted, and how I dealt with this situation myself. Sometimes, I could hardly move properly, and yet was sharply criticized by some people.” He accepted that his loss to Sergiy Stakhovsky at Wimbledon was one of his worst: “Of course, that defeat was one of the biggest disappointments of my season. I went to Wimbledon convinced that I could win the tournament for the eighth time. But it wasnt a complete surprise for me. Because I hadnt played really well in Paris. Then Wimbledon was the start of the bigger problems.”
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 15:02:00 +0000
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