Did the defeat at Wimbledon make him fragile?
by Rolf Fleckenstein
Anyone who watched Roger Federer, especially as a fan, during his fourth-round match against Tommy Robredo came to despair. You had to vacillate between crying, horror and screaming if Federer's luck and success on the court meant anything to you. But you couldn't understand it. A man like Tommy Robredo had never been a real opponent for Federer, an opponent he had always been able to defeat safely, and then suddenly this: defeat against Robredo, and in "only" three sets. What a disaster. He had lost the first set by a narrow margin and the second by a wide margin, but in the third he had the chance to take the lead with a break and to win the set quickly and turn the match around. His opponent practically gave him the chance, but it just didn't happen. Stupid mistakes instead of winners. Warped, missed, wasted. It was enough to make you tear your hair out and for Federer himself it must have been pure hell, because when the shots don't come as expected, the self-doubt, the helplessness and the powerlessness increase in front of an otherwise defeatable opponent. And so it had to come as it had to come, but no one but Robredo's corner wanted it to: Roger Federer loses to Tommy Robredo in three sets: 6:7, 3:6 and 4:6. Federer beat himself and did everything to make Robredo win, that's the really bitter part of the whole story.
What's going on with Roger Federer? What happened that day? It simply doesn't make sense that Federer should have forgotten how to play from one day to the next. It simply can't be down to his technique and physique. But what about his psyche and its condition: the unconditional will, the motivation and an unbroken self-confidence? More and more a bad suspicion is shimmering through, as I hinted at in my article "Roger Federer - Following in the footsteps of Pete Sampras". I have described. Federer's defeat by Sergiy Stakhovsky in Wimbledon this year is obviously having an effect and has obviously led to a serious break in his self-confidence and can become a mental break if he does not do something about this traumatic experience as quickly as possible. Purely athletic training, physiological rebuilding, good nutrition, etc. will not be enough on their own, I fear. He has to work on his psyche, which has been damaged by the Wimbledon defeat, he has to process this traumatic defeat psychologically, because it has obviously made him very fragile. Only when he faces this trauma of the heavy defeat and processes it properly will this fragility leave him again. It is simply to be wished for such a great sportsman and tennis player as Roger Federer that he quickly takes the right steps to decisively and effectively counter the downward trend of the last few months.
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