For most people this is old news, but I thought there was no way around making a post about it. A few days ago Roger Federer announced his departure from the 2016 season on his website:
Dear Fans,
I’m extremely disappointed to announce that I will not be able to represent Switzerland at the Olympic Games in Rio and that I will also miss the remainder of the season. Considering all options after consulting with my doctors and my team, I have made the very difficult decision to call an end to my 2016 season as I need more extensive rehabilitation following my knee surgery earlier this year. The doctors advised that if I want to play on the ATP World Tour injury free for another few years, as I intend to do, I must give both my knee and body the proper time to fully recover. It is tough to miss the rest of the year. However, the silver lining is that this experience has made me realize how lucky I have been throughout my career with very few injuries. The love I have for tennis, the competition, tournaments and of course you, the fans remains intact. I am as motivated as ever and plan to put all my energy towards coming back strong, healthy and in shape to play attacking tennis in 2017.
Thanks for your continued support.
Roger
This is obviously a huge downer for most tennis fans, but if we want to take out the positives it is that he looks forward to playing tennis for a “another few years”. The tour will now feel slightly empty without both Federer and Nadal in action, but hopefully some young guns like for example Shapalov, Thiem or Kyrgios can steal some of the limelight and prevent the sport from being too one-sided (meaning Djokovic winning everything).
In Washington, D.C. last week we saw the usual under-performer Gael Monfils win his first ATP 500 title and with his new coach Mikael Tillström (Sweden doesn’t have a lot of great players these days, but the coaches are definitely top notch), he seems more focused on results and less prone to hot-shot games away.
So hopefully we can see a resurgence of Monfils and why not also Dimitrov who has had horrible results for quite a while, but has now won a couple of matches in Toronto and looks to be regaining some confidence. For us gear nerds, Dimitrov has been switching racquets back and forth and now rumours say he’s back to his old 93-inch pro staff albeit under a new paint job. This means Wilson released the Pro Staff 97S
as his signature model and only months later he’s playing with a completely different racquet. Maybe they should completely stop with this kind of advertising because it is starting to become slightly ridiculous with some exceptions (Federer actually using the RF97A
being one of them).
In other (maybe less intriguing) tennis racquet news, I’m now play-testing the first generation Babolat Pure Drive (from 1994 if I’m not misinformed) and I must say I’m very impressed with the feel and spin. Will play around a bit with weight and balance and also string before I give it a review here. The stiffness rating is RA 67 unstrung which means I’m playing a Pure Drive that is relatively soft on the arm. Amazing stuff.
Hope you’re all happy and playing and watching a lot of tennis.
