Federer defeat opens way for Nadal


Recommended Posts

:(

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Roger Federer’s record 4-1/2 year reign as world number one could end this week after he was beaten 7-6 4-6 7-6 by Croatian Ivo Karlovic in the third round of the Cincinnati Masters on Thursday.

Spaniard Rafael Nadal, who beat Federer in this year’s French Open and Wimbledon finals, will take over from the Swiss as the world’s top ranked player if he wins the tournament on Sunday.

The 2.08-metre tall Karlovic, who has hit more aces and won more service games than any other player on the ATP Tour this year, applied constant pressure.

Karlovic, who hit 22 aces and many more service winners, has also played more tiebreaks than anyone else this season, the potency of his delivery frequently reducing each set to a shootout over a dozen or so points at the end.

This was about the worst scenario for an already under-pressure Federer, who is still trying to recover from the biggest emotional setback of his career - the loss of his Wimbledon title to Nadal three and a half weeks ago - and whose confidence is at low levels.

“It’s not easy coming from slower conditions to fast ones,” Federer told reporters. “But I have played Ivo on all surfaces and he actually gets a greater play on the slower ones.

“But what are you going to do today if he serves like that? Maybe if I got the first set I would be sitting here and it would be different, but that’s not the case.”

Last week Federer lost his opening match in Toronto to unseeded Frenchman Gilles Simon and here he almost went out in his opener again, surviving against Robbie Ginepri only after the American was serving for the match.

TIEBREAK WOES

When Karlovic won his points it was usually with sharp staccato rallies, while Federer often had to play the rallies out to maintain parity, thereby increasing the pressure on him to make mistakes as the match went on.

In the opening-set tiebreak it all went with serve till 6-6 when Federer topspun a drive which was called in, only for it to be changed after Karlovic appealed to the Hawkeye replay system. Karlovic then hit a winning forehand drive on the next point.

Federer chiseled out one break of serve in the fifth game of the second set but in the deciding third-set tiebreak, Federer suffered a chronic piece of ill-fortune.

On his opening service point, a forehand drive struck the top of the net cord and leapt the full length of the court to land long. Karlovic clung to that advantage and ended the match with a service winner on the line.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/652998-federer-defeat-opens-way-for-nadal/
Share on other sites

^ Nadal will become #1 this year. :(

Nadal would take over the top spot in next week?s rankings if he wins the tournament. Even if he fails, he now has piled up enough points in Cincinnati to overtake Federer when the rankings come out on Aug. 18. The rankings include points earned in the last 52 weeks, and time is on Nadal?s side.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/news?slug=ap-c...p&type=lgns

I wonder if this slump on Federer's part is him reworking his play to improve his swing/tactics and beat Nadal. I'm reminded of how Tiger Woods basically reworked his swing to become better, and he was in a slump due to that for a year or something.

If not, I still wouldn't count out Federer... he has fallen into a slump before, and bounced back... I just hope he's trying to improve or rework his swing so that he becomes better

Nadal... winning both the French and Wimbeldon... he deserves the #1 spot, but showing how much he has to win puts into perspective how much Federer has owned in the last 4 years

Federer for US Open 2008 Champion!

/crosses fingers

Go Federer!

I don't think this will ever happen again; A single player being #1 for this long. Nadal will become #1 later this year, but I doubt he'll retain it. Chances are that Federer takes back #1 next year after the Austrailian open.

Yeah totally. He may even be back to Number 1 after the US Open!

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Here is the new Surface Laptop Ultra wallpaper in high resolution by Taras Buria Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, its brand-new high-end laptop powered by NVIDIA's brand-new RTX Spark processor. As usual, Microsoft gives each new device a unique wallpaper, and the Surface Laptop Ultra is no exception. While the device is not publicly available yet, somebody has already extracted its wallpaper, giving everyone a chance to get a piece of the upcoming laptop in its full-resolution glory. The Surface Laptop Ultra has a very dark, abstract wallpaper that resembles the stock wallpapers in Windows Server, albeit with much less color. Having this dark, grim wallpaper highlights the laptop's mini-LED display and its ability to cut off parts of the screen's backlight to achieve OLED-like black levels. However, if you also like light wallpapers, we made a white version by simply inverting its colors. You can download both wallpapers below (click the image, right-click it, and select "Save as"): The Surface Laptop Ultra is expected to launch later this year. Microsoft is not revealing full details yet, including the price. However, Microsoft confirmed up to 1 petaflop of AI performance and RTX 5070-level of GPU performance. The heart of the laptop has up to 20 CPU cores and 6,144 GPU cores. Additionally, Microsoft and NVIDIA boast high CPU efficiency for all-day battery life. As for the display, it is a 15-inch mini-LED display with a pixel density of 262 ppi and a maximum brightness of 2,000 nits. Of course, not everyone needs this amount of power, and certainly not everyone can afford it. For those who need a more affordable device, Microsoft is also preparing the next-generation Surface Pro powered by the Snapdragon X2 Elite processor. Weeks ahead of the announcement, details about this computer were leaked by a retailer. Do you like the Surface Laptop Ultra's stock wallpaper? Share your thoughts in the comments. Image provided by @nextgenos2026 on X
    • From all that I've read on the subject--not that much, really--it looks to me like companies and parents are trying to protect themselves from children using their parents accounts to run up giant bills, sometimes in the thousands of dollars, and the first the parents know about it is when they get sued... Internet companies have been sued for tailoring their ads to children, which is kind of old news. My belief is that policing starts at home with the parents, and the reason that so many laws that can't be enforced are being passed is because parents are eschewing their responsibilities, claiming not enough time, not enough knowledge, etc. Giving kids cell phones sans Internet connectivity is a good place to start--confine Internet activity to PCs in the home that the parents regulate. My kids are all grown and gone, I'm happy to say... They have their own kids to worry about.
    • ChartNet’s 1.7 million synthetic samples let compact open-source models outperform GPT-4o on every chart task   A team from MIT and the MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab has built a training dataset that solves one of the most persistent gaps in enterprise AI: the inability of even the best commercial models to reliably read a chart...... https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317752/20260604/ai-chart-understanding-breakthrough-mit-ibm-dataset-lets-small-models-beat-gpt-4o.htm  
    • BTW DXVK is also available on Windows and offers similar benefits like on Linux when it comes to performance, at least in some titles. The Raceroom racing sim for example even offers DXVK as one of its officially supported options and it can achieve ridiculous improvements in certain situations, like quite literally doubling (or more) the framerates
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Month Later
      nothanks earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      B2Proxy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Year In
      MadMung0 earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      jefred earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Apprentice
      JoeyNeo went up a rank
      Apprentice
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      476
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      233
    3. 3
      Skyfrog
      79
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      68
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      58
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!