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 Swiss aiming to become the oldest number one player in ATP history. The test begins at the Ahoy stadium when the 36-year-old, who claimed his 20th Grand Slam title a fortnight ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"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}]}}