Roger Federer sent something of a shock wave through the tennis world with what he thought was an obvious joke after improving to 18-0 in first-round matches at the U.S. Open.Roger Federer sent something of a shock wave through the tennis world with what he thought was an obvious joke after improving to 18-0 in first-round matches at the U.S. Open. I\u2019m happy I never stumbled at the first hurdle,\u201d Federer said during his on-court interview Tuesday night. \u201cAlmost time to retire _ but not yet.\u201d Some folks\u2019 reaction might best be summed up as: Wait. WHAT?!<\/p>\n
So the 37-year-old Federer was asked at his news conference to clarify his comment after the 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 victory over 117th-ranked Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Why did Federer mention retirement?<\/p>\n
Turned out it was completely harmless. That was meaning, like, \u2018I never lost a first-round match here at the Open. I won all my 18. You don\u2019t want that (loss) to happen next year.\u2019 I said, \u2018Maybe I could retire now, because I protect my 18 first-round wins here.\u2019 That\u2019s what I meant with it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a total joke, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, then, addressing all of the members of the media in the room, just to make absolutely sure everyone understood what he\u2019d been thinking, Federer added with a smile: \u201cSo please don\u2019t read into it. Don\u2019t even write that word.\u201d For years, actually, Federer has dealt with questions about when he might retire. In part, that\u2019s because elite tennis players often used to become not-so-elite by the time they passed the age of 30. If anything, he\u2019s looked as good as ever over the past two seasons, adding three Grand Slam titles in that span to raise his men\u2019s record to 20. Against Nishioka, Federer delivered 14 aces and never was in any trouble.<\/p>\n
Federer saved the first eight break points he faced before finally faltering by pushing a forehand long on the ninth, losing serve for the only time while trying to close out the match at 5-2 in the third set. By then, the match was 1 hour, 45 minutes old _ and it would last another seven minutes. Thankfully I wasn\u2019t too nervous tonight. I felt good. I felt like I had a good preparation week. No hiccups there. I think that settles my nerves there. When you do walk out onto Arthur Ashe, you feel like people are there to see the show, enjoy themselves. Sure, they come for the tennis, but it\u2019s also sort of a bucket list, wanting to be there,\u201d Federer said. So, yeah, there\u2019s pressure. But, no, never gets old,\u201d he added. \u201cI love coming to play here. It\u2019s been so many years now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger Federer sent something of a shock wave through the tennis world with what he thought was an obvious joke after improving to 18-0 in first-round matches at the U.S. Open.Roger Federer sent something of a shock wave through the tennis world with what he thought was an obvious joke after improving to 18-0 in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40513","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\/40513","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=40513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40515,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40513\/revisions\/40515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}