Roger Federer will target a return to the top of the rankings as the Rotterdam World Tennis tournament starts on Monday, with the Swiss aiming to become the<\/p>\n
oldest number one player in ATP history.<\/p>\n
The test begins at the Ahoy stadium when the 36-year-old, who claimed his 20th Grand Slam title a fortnight ago in Melbourne, returns to the Dutch port city for<\/p>\n
the first time since 2013.<\/p>\n
Top seed Federer starts in the first round against a qualifier in an event he has won twice before, lifting the trophy in 2005 and 2012.<\/p>\n
Should he reach the semi-finals, Federer would pass Rafael Nadal to take over the world\u2019s top ranking.<\/p>\n
But his quarter-final opponent could well be long-time friend Stan Wawrinka, seeded fifth as he comes back from 2017 knee surgery.<\/p>\n
Federer lies just 155 points behind the injured Nadal in the standings, with a possible 180 points available for making the last four in Rotterdam.
\nThe Swiss would surpass Andre Agassi, who held the top spot in 2003 aged 33 years and 131 days.<\/p>\n
The evergreen Federer has repeatedly said he has no intention of stopping in the foreseeable future, but realises that maintaining his longevity requires his<\/p>\n
trademark precise planning, of which the decision to compete in Rotterdam is the latest example.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve won three slams now in 12 months. I can\u2019t believe it myself. I just got to keep a good schedule, stay hungry, then maybe good things can happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think age is an issue, per se. It\u2019s just a number,\u201d he said after winning the Melbourne title for a sixth time.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I need to be very careful in my planning, really decide beforehand what are my goals, what are my priorities. I think that\u2019s what\u2019s going to dictate how<\/p>\n
successful I will be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger Federer will target a return to the top of the rankings as the Rotterdam World Tennis tournament starts on Monday, with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21707,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705\/revisions\/21707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}