WIMBLEDON, England — Roger Federer has won Wimbledon a record eight times, which means on Monday, following tradition, he will for the eighth time play the first match on Centre Court on the tournament’s first day.
Federer, 36, has played more than 100 matches at the All England Club since he first made the main draw in 1999. But that doesn’t mean the butterflies will be absent when he steps on the court with his first-round opponent, 58th-ranked Dusan Lajovic.
“It remains a little bit nerve-racking, you know, in all honesty,” Federer said at a news conference Sunday. “It’s a big deal. I mean, besides the history and the mythical place that it is, you cannot also practice on it. When you come out, there’s a bit of uncertainty for both players.”
Wimbledon is Federer’s seventh tournament of the year. He won his last Grand Slam event, the Australian Open, for his 20th major title. He then took the title in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in February to return to the No. 1 ranking, which he has been trading with his longtime rival Rafael Nadal ever since. (Nadal is No. 1 now, but because Wimbledon uses a special grass-court formula for seeding, Federer is the No. 1 seed.)
After reaching the final in Indian Wells, Calif., and losing his first match at the Miami Open in March, Federer decided to skip the clay-court season for the second year in a row.
“I think the three months did me again a world of good,” Federer said.
Since returning three weeks ago for the grass-court season, he has won eight of nine matches, reaching two finals. “I played all the grass-court matches I was hoping to play,” Federer said.
Nine matches in 12 days left him tired, he said, but overall he was confident heading into Wimbledon.
Federer’s clay-court absence, combined with Nadal’s early-season leg injury, means this is the first tournament featuring both of them since the Australian Open in January.
Nadal is coming off his 11th French Open title, but has not yet played a match on grass this year and has failed to advance past the round of 16 at Wimbledon since 2011. He opens Tuesday against Dudi Sela.
In the lead-up to this tournament, Federer and Nadal have been peppered with questions surrounding the 10-year anniversary of their 2008 final here, won by Nadal in five sets as darkness closed in. It is, amazingly, the last time they played each other at the All England Club.
At the time, the match was declared one of the best ever. It was considered seminal, a possible changing-of-the-guard moment as Nadal won his first Grand Slam title off clay and stopped Federer’s five-year winning streak at Wimbledon. Federer called it “one of the hardest losses I ever had.” The match was the subject of a 2009 book and a new documentary.
On Sunday, Federer said he and Nadal probably would still be talking about the match “when we’re older in the rocking chair.”
But a decade later, Federer and Nadal are the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds at Wimbledon, as they were in 2008. They have split the last six Grand Slam titles. The guard hasn’t changed — or, at least, the old guard is new again.
“There were more highlights since then for both of us,” Federer said.
During a recent interview with Tennis Channel about the match, he added, he realized there were many details he did not remember any more.
When asked about the match on Saturday, Nadal, 32, said: “Today I see that like a long time ago. But the good thing is I’m still here.”
So is Federer, and for the eighth time since 2004, he will be nervously stepping on the fresh grass for the first match at Centre Court on the opening day of Wimbledon.
Source : NYtimes
