http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/sp...tennis.html?hpFederer : Murray Takes it Personally
WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND — As I sat in a nearly empty Center Court in a nostalgic mood on Sunday, young people toting bulky racket bags kept climbing the staircases and stepping inside with their eyes turned upward.
They were players, coming to take a peek at the newest roof in tennis, which was fully retracted Sunday, its folds of transparent material bunched together between the arches of solid white superstructure.
“A powerful thing,” said Neuza Silva, a qualifier who on Monday will become the first Portuguese player to play singles on Center Court when she faces Serena Williams.
Roger Federer, a five-time champion here, has played plenty on Center Court and made his reconnaissance mission last week.
“It didn’t lose anything of the whole history part,” Federer said. “It still remains, you know, the best court in the world. I’m excited to be going out there on Monday.”
In normal circumstances, Federer would not be stepping on to his favorite patch of grass until Tuesday. For a change, he is not the defending champion here, after losing to Rafael Nadal last year in a final that will remain part of the Wimbledon conversation for decades to come.
But with the top-seeded Nadal having withdrawn Friday because of tendinitis in both knees, Federer — as a finalist last year — will get to keep enjoying the honor of playing the first match of the tournament on the most famous court in tennis.
It will be his first match of the year on grass, thanks to the break he took to decompress after winning his first French Open. His opponent will be Yen-Hsun Lu of Taipei.
Federer has skipped the short grass-court circuit before, doing so in 2007 and then going on to win his fifth straight title at Wimbledon.
“It’s been easy to digest winning in Paris, not hard,” he said. “For me, it did me an enormous amount of good to be in Switzerland for a week, to do nothing except a bit of physical training and to see my family, my friends and everyone. It did me a lot of good in the head and to prepare for what was to come.”
Federer said he still had not been able to answer all the congratulatory text messages and e-mails he received and still had not succeeded in speaking directly with Pete Sampras, the American whose record of 14 Grand Slam singles title they now share.
“We still haven’t managed to talk to each other,” he said. “But I’ll try again, and he’ll keep trying, too.”
Federer is not the only man whose unexpected success in Paris has made his life more hectic than usual. Robin Soderling, the Swede who upset Nadal in the fourth round and then reached the final, has been busy reliving the tournament: giving news conferences and appearing on television and radio programs in Sweden. His country had not had a Grand Slam finalist since Thomas Johansson won the Australian in 2002 and has only one player in the top 100 now: Soderling.
“We needed this,” Soderling told Swedish reporters. “Because if we want to bring back the interest in our sport, and create a new generation of players, we needed a leader.”
Soderling, who will start on Court 1 on Monday against Gilles Müller of Luxembourg, is still the only Swede in the singles draw at Wimbledon, but there was another positive sign for the future in Paris when Daniel Berta won the boys singles title.
Soderling, seeded 13th, and Federer could meet in the round of 16 at Wimbledon, and there are other dangerous grass-court players in Federer’s quarter, including Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France, Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano López of Spain and the huge-serving Croatian ace machine, Ivo Karlovic.
But there can be no doubt about who is the favorite to win the tournament, even if Andy Murray of Britain, the top seed in the other half of the draw with Nadal missing, has beaten Federer in their past four matches.
“Federer’s made the last six finals of Wimbledon,” Murray said. “He’s obviously the big favorite going into the tournament. I’ve never won a Grand Slam before. I think I’ve got a chance of doing it here. But I need to play my best tennis ever to do it. It’s not like it’s going to come easily. Slams don’t come easily, and I’m sure the guys that have won them will tell you that. I understand how big a challenge it is.”
Federer has actually won some Wimbledons with little apparent difficulty: sweeping through the draw in 2005 and 2006 with the loss of just one set each year. But Murray, who will face the American Robert Kendrick in the first round, is clearly Federer’s most obvious threat this year. In the absence of Nadal, he is also the only man who could create a final match-up with Federer that could transcend — at least in Britain — the best rivalry in sports.
It has been 73 years since a British man — Fred Perry — won the singles title here.
“You can either deal with that stuff or you can’t,” Murray said of the intense interest he generates at home. “I think that I don’t get caught up in the whole, you know, hype thing, getting involved in reading all the papers, listening to what everyone else is saying. Because at the end of the day, it makes no difference if some guy think I can win the tournament. The guys that I work with and myself, it’s important what they think about my game and how we approach all of the matches. But I think I can deal with it.”
The British press, always quick to look for Wimbledon rubbing points, has already been emphasizing that Federer has not always been appropriately respectful or complimentary in defeat against the 22-year-old Murray. But Federer said he was at peace with his approach.
“That surprises me,” he said. “But there were some matches where I was not 100 percent, like in Shanghai for example. It was visible. It was clear. I was sick. I had a sore back and all that. I’m not going to say he’s the best player of all time if I had a sore back and also considering that I wasn’t far from beating him.
“I’ve always been honest. But I’ve always said 100,000 times that he’s an exceptional player with loads of talent, and a player I think will win Grand Slams. I just thought, at one stage, that he’d have, in fact, more success more quickly. Sometimes perhaps I was too severe with him, but he took it too personally. So that’s too bad for him. I don’t care too much what he says. I feel I was always straight with him.”
