Changing Of The Guard

Written by: Staff on 27th January 2011

Changing Of The Guard

Roger Federer (SUI) |

It has to be said, we at 10sballs.com are not having the best of Australian Opens. There are three of us here and two of us have been felled by the bug that is flying around the press bunker. The bug is evil, we are crook and suddenly the fit young things leaping about in shorts and t-shirts want to make you spit.

But as yours truly lay on her bed of pain, staring at the ceiling and pondering the great questions in life – why does toast always land jammy side down? Is it me or is Rafa going bald? And why is the fluff on the bathroom floor always a different colour from the towels on the rack? – a simple truth became apparent.

Now is the changing of the guard. The departure of The Mighty Fed from the semi finals, beaten, as he was in New York, by Novak Djokovic just added more weight to the argument that Federer is losing his grip on greatness. He was out-muscled, out-played and, ultimately, out-nerved by Djokovic 7-6, 7-5, 6-4. Worse, he knew it. He will be 30 in the summer and not even he can turn back time. The younger men are bigger, stronger and – let’s face it – younger. Fed’s time is almost over.

This may sound daft, but it was telling that Federer came in bare-headed to the press conference. When he has lost a close match, when he feels he could and should have closed it out, he tends to appear with his RF branded baseball cap pulled down tight over his eyes. He tends to look down and not engage the questioner. Sometimes the cap hides the fact that he is tetchy; sometimes the cap hides the fact that he is emotional. This time, he came to face the press a t-shirt, no hat and he looked directly into the eyes of the hack interrogating him. He had been tonked; he had been made to look second best; there was no way out.

“I just ran into a player who was a bit better than me tonight,” was his simplest and best assessment.

The Australian Open 2011, then, may be the turning point. From now on, the duopoly may be over. The Roger and Rafa Show may be into its final season.

Federer’s loss came hard on the heels of Rafa Nadal’s injury-induced defeat at the hands of David Ferrer. After his best ever season and after becoming the first man since Rod Laver to win the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open in succession, he was toast. Exhausted towards the end of last season, he began this year with a virus in Doha and a micro-tear in his hamstring against his old friend Ferrer on Wednesday. It is obvious that Nadal’s body cannot withstand the relentless punishment of a full season at the top of the game.

So that leaves us with a potential vacuum. And who will step forward to fill it? If the form books are anything to go by, it should be Andy Murray – should he beat Ferrer in the semi finals – and Djokovic. One week apart in age, they were the golden boys of their junior generation and have been knocking on the door of the grand slam circuit ever since they reached maturity.

Djokovic already has the 2008 Australian Open trophy in his collection but he won that by beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Sure enough, he beat Federer in the semi finals but immediately after, the Swiss admitted that he had been suffering from mononucleosis. Djoko’s win, then, was no more than a minor blot of Roger and Rafa’s otherwise unblemished copy books.

This time it is different. As of Thursday night’s loss, the once mighty Federer does not hold a single grand slam title. That has not happened since 2003. Rafa, meanwhile, is heading for home and hoping that his hamstring will heal well and quickly. He has no idea what the coming year will hold.

Djokovic and Murray are only 23. They believe that this is their time and finally they have their chance to shine. And if they face off in the final on Sunday, they know that they may be marking the beginning of a new rivalry at the top of the rankings. The guard is changing, however slowly, and the world’s No.1 and No.2 players are going to have deal with that fact. We be left with a Rafa and Djoko rivalry or a threesome between Murray, Djokovic and Nadal, but the old days of Rodge and Raf dominating the world are long gone.

Blimey, it’s funny what conclusions you can draw when you are lying in your pit between matches. And should my mother be reading this: fear not – I will live thanks to frequent applications of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and over-the-counter drugs. To paraphrase the great Bob Dylan: It’s all right, ma; I’m only sneezing.

Topics: Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer