Roger Federer Faces Knee Surgery That Is Doubting His Future


For Roger Federer, there will be no US Open this year and after announcing on Sunday that he will have another knee surgery, it is time to question whether he will be able to tour again and play tennis.

For now, Federer, one of the greatest athletes of this or any era, is not considering retiring, but after turning 40 last Sunday and having two surgeries to his right knee in 2020, he realizes that the odds are against him. .

There is no doubt that he is an optimist who tends to see the full side of his water bottle for a long time. He’s been successfully fending off retirement (and retirement questions) for over a decade, but even he looked and sounded sullen when he explained his status in an Instagram post on Sunday, a medium that didn’t exist when he started playing the Grand Slam. Tournaments in the late 1990s.

“I will be on crutches for weeks and I will be out of the game for months,” Federer said. “Of course it will be difficult in some ways, but I also know it’s the right thing to do. Because I want to run again later and I want to give myself a glimmer of hope to get back on the lap one way or another. I’m realistic, don’t get me wrong. At this age, I’m going to do another surgery and do it.” I know how hard it is to try, but look, I want to be healthy.”

For most of his remarkable career, Federer has seemed to have had a fascinating existence: free from major injuries and boredom in a Darwinian sport that can crush the bodies and souls of players.

Where others saw inconvenience, he saw opportunity: to embrace touring, racing, press conferences, and grueling travel even when he and his wife, Mirka, were on the road with their four young children.

Paul Annacone said, “After traveling with him for four years, all I can tell you is that he’s one of the best at not complaining and not letting people know what’s going on when he has physical issues and doesn’t use things as excuses.” , the former coach said in a phone call on Sunday.

Federer has had to deal with chronic back pain and other ailments while staying ahead and staying there.

“It made it look a lot smoother than it was,” Annacone said.

In 2016, at the age of 34, he did not have his first surgery. He roared again in 2017 after a six-month layoff following left knee surgery. win the Australian Open and Wimbledon. He ran 20 total Grand Slam singles titles in 2018, a men’s record. win the Australian Open again.

But luck hasn’t been on him lately. In the Wimbledon final in 2019, he scored two championship points on his serve against Novak Djokovic and was unable to return, losing in five sets.

In 2020, he had two operations on his right knee. He missed more than a year of the competition, and although the first phase of this mandatory break coincided with the pandemic holiday of the tour, struggled to reach his customary high notes He competed occasionally after his return.

He played five tournaments in 2021 and just getting to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-0, beaten last month by the talented Polish Hubert Hurkacz, who had not yet reached the Grand Slam singles final. If this is Federer’s last game at the All England Club or his last game on tour, it is far from appropriate. However, his failure to win as many as one game in the third set on the court, where he set eight singles records, was also a sign that something was wrong.

He confirmed this while making it clear on Sunday that the 2021 season is over.

“I hurt myself more during the lawn season and at Wimbledon,” he said. “It’s just not the way forward.”

He suggested that doctors say surgery is the best option, not just for tennis, but for life after tennis as well.

“Unfortunately, they told me that I needed surgery to feel better in the medium and long term, so I decided to have it done,” he said.

Federer did not disclose the nature of his surgery or even which knee would require surgery. His agent, Tony Godsick, did not immediately respond to messages seeking clarification.

But Nicholas DiNubile, an American orthopedic surgeon from Philadelphia who specializes in knee surgery, said Federer’s timeline — being “a few weeks” on crutches and “a few months” away from the tour — suggests it could be a more serious surgery.

“As a knee specialist, I am absolutely concerned,” DiNubile, who has never treated Federer, said in an email. “More surgery is not necessarily better. At this point, he’s probably not dealing with simpler things like meniscus tears, but with arthritis and cushion (articular cartilage) damage, which tends to occur over time. If the wear and development of arthritis is part of the problem, you cannot fix it with arthroscopic surgery.”

DiNubile said “regenerative techniques” could be tried, including microfracture surgery.

“He may feel better on his knee, but will he be able to compete with younger and younger opponents at the level he needs, with his strength and unlimited energy, especially in today’s very physical and exhausting game?” DiNubile said.

Whatever the precise nature of Federer’s recent injury, these are difficult questions to answer in the affirmative.

The only other man to stay in the top 10 after age 40 in the open age, Australian Ken Rosewall didn’t have to overcome major medical issues to do so. Rosewall’s primary concern while remaining a contender into the 1970s was his younger and hungrier opposition.

If Federer is to chase a more appropriate endgame at Wimbledon than a disproportionate defeat, he has to solve a more complex equation.

For now, he remains tied to longtime rivals Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, with 20 Grand Slam singles titles. It seems quite likely. number 1 Djokovic Will be Just one of three people to play at the US Open It will begin on August 30 in New York. Nadal is battling the return of his career-threatening left foot problem in 2005.

After losing (and limping) in the Washington tournament this month, Nadal withdrew from the National Bank Open in Toronto and the Western & Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, and returned to Spain for treatment. He has yet to confirm that he will play at the US Open, where he has won four singles titles.

Federer, who won five US Open titles from 2004 to 2008, most recently played in New York in 2019, losing to Grigor Dimitrov in five sets in the quarterfinals, which turned out to be Federer’s last US Open game.

“He’s in good hands,” Annacone said, referring to Federer’s support team. “But at some point, we knew that Father Time was going to take the reins of him and Rafa and Serena in some way, shape or form. Let’s hope they can all retire on their own terms without stopping because they have to.”



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