Friday, January 25, 2008

End of an Era?

For a while, it looked like Federer would roll on to yet another major final. Up a break, and ready to serve for the set, when Djokovic broke back and broke again to win the first set, and pretty much, all those errors that Federer was making was coming to hurt him. Djokovic started to hit with confidence, especially on serve. His movement was fantastic, and he was incredibly steady.

Federer, on the other hand, was having a hard time moving to his right, and Djokovic was taking advantage of it. Federer's forehand flew a bit on him. And whenever Djokovic was down break point, he'd come up with a big serve, something Federer was unable to do.

Djokovic looked so good, that I wonder how Tsonga, who utterly demolished Nadal, will fare. Yesterday, I was confident that Tsonga would give a huge challenge to either.

In the press conference, Federer didn't feel so bad losing. He didn't feel 100%. I think he feels that had he been 100%, he would have done fine. Indeed, he felt that losing the first set allowed Novak to hit more freely, something he wouldn't have done otherwise.

People are already, minutes after the match is over, wondering if the days of Federer's dominance is over. Federer doesn't seem to think so, and probably plans to retool and think about what happened, and head back to the drawing board.

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