Australia Open Day 12

Remove this Banner Ad

Log in to remove this ad.

Hippster

Club Legend
Sep 3, 2017
1,275
1,353
AFL Club
Hawthorn
A 36 year old is playing better than ever before and you think this is normal?

Dearie me.

Firstly I don’t think he’s playing anywhere near what he was like 10 years ago. Not even close. Opposition now is virtually non existent with injuries to his only real challengers.
But at least I now know your angle.
Don’t let the hate take over you.
One step at a time. One foot in front of the other and you can get through this. I’m sure even Rogers rooting for you.
 
Firstly I don’t think he’s playing anywhere near what he was like 10 years ago. Not even close. Opposition now is virtually non existent with injuries to his only real challengers.
But at least I now know your angle.
Don’t let the hate take over you.
One step at a time. One foot in front of the other and you can get through this. I’m sure even Rogers rooting for you.

Ah yes, I must be a Federer hater, despite the fact that he has always been one of my favourite players.

Sorry for applying a bit of critical thinking to proceedings.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

It's not unusual for men to peak in their 30's for endurance.

Age of Peak Competitive Performance of Elite Athletes: A Systematic Review

This review found a linear relationship between event duration and age of age of peak performance. The more endurance an event required the older the athletes peaked.

Right, so presumably Federer should've just kept getting better the older he got.

But he didn't. He went on the kind of decline you would expect from a man in his thirties who has been playing a physically demanding sport for fifteen years.

Oh, but then suddenly as of last year he became superman! Totally normal. Nothing to see here.

I await the other bevy of reasons, like a new racquet, smart training, blah blah blah. It's always the same with the top players.

Is Feds game even built on endurance? His rally length and match time length is much shorter than Nadal and djokovic for example. He appears to waste much less energy in a tennis match compared to his top 10 peers.

This is one of the other reasons often used in his defence. I bought it until last year, when he became a completely different player. In any case, it wasn't true in this match, where Federer did more running than his opponent.

And pointing to his matches being shorter than those two doesn't really say much.
 

PIE-BOI

Club Legend
Mar 16, 2005
1,112
351
Melbourne
AFL Club
Collingwood
Other Teams
Real Madrid
Wrapt to see the GOAT again
30db13eadc54357e863025779a978704.jpg
4dc20b7a92189633af5db3dd7db8076f.jpg
6ead7eb274f862f0c8f13cffee407c64.jpg
2fd0c21e9edf0b3dddc2d95a88390310.jpg


Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk
 

Marmik

Club Legend
Jul 19, 2009
1,453
2,815
Melbourne
AFL Club
Richmond
Other Teams
R.Federer, M.Verstappen, ChelseaFC
A 36 year old is playing better than ever before and you think this is normal?

Dearie me.

Right, so presumably Federer should've just kept getting better the older he got.

But he didn't. He went on the kind of decline you would expect from a man in his thirties who has been playing a physically demanding sport for fifteen years.

Oh, but then suddenly as of last year he became superman! Totally normal. Nothing to see here.

I await the other bevy of reasons, like a new racquet, smart training, blah blah blah. It's always the same with the top players.



This is one of the other reasons often used in his defence. I bought it until last year, when he became a completely different player. In any case, it wasn't true in this match, where Federer did more running than his opponent.

And pointing to his matches being shorter than those two doesn't really say much.


Absurd. If you’ve followed tennis long enough you will know chasing down balls and grinding out long rallies is not Federers style. For example in this first set, when Chung tried to lob him. Federer made 0 attempt to chase the ball regardless if it was in or not. (It was out by a couple of centimetres) This has what allowed him to play and last as long as he has. Players like Nadal and Djokovic grind and chase down every ball and you can see how that has negatively effected them now as their bodies are cooked.

And yes, a new racquet with a bigger head has gone a long way. He doesn’t need to run around and hit a forehand, instead he can confidently take his backhand early. It’s little things like that go a long way.

Have you ever taken a week off at the gym? Do you realise how refreshed you come back? Now imagine taking 6 months off having all your injuries heal. And it’s not like he doesn’t get injured? He was literally cooked during US open and had to pull out of Cincinnati prior to US open. Not to mention he even skipped the entire clay court season to preserve his body.

Nadal also made a final and won 2 slams after taking 6 months off. Is he doping too?

There’s some critical thinking for you. :)
 
Last edited:

Demosthenes

Premiership Player
Jun 9, 2015
3,364
3,074
AFL Club
Melbourne
This is one of the other reasons often used in his defence. I bought it until last year, when he became a completely different player. In any case, it wasn't true in this match, where Federer did more running than his opponent.

And pointing to his matches being shorter than those two doesn't really say much.
I think if you tracked Federer's average rally length over his career you'd see a considerable progressive shortening in the last few years. He has undeniably retooled his game significantly - it's far more serve-based, he comes to the net more frequently than he has in years, and his winner and unforced error counts are much higher than they used to be.

I mean, I'd never say any athlete definitely isn't juicing, but it's simplistic to say that he is just because he's suddenly become successful again. There's a lot of reasons for his resurgence - not least of which being the inability of most of the other top players to stay on the court.
 

Marmik

Club Legend
Jul 19, 2009
1,453
2,815
Melbourne
AFL Club
Richmond
Other Teams
R.Federer, M.Verstappen, ChelseaFC
Normally when people ask this question rhetorically they're expecting a 'yes', rather than a 'no'. The fact that you expect the latter says everything it needs to about tennis audiences.

You’re right. There’s no logic in their improvement. The entire tennis audience is foolish. Federer and Nadal are doping. We can probably include Stan in that too since his slams were won after 30.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Back