Speaking about his journey at the Australian Open throughout his tennis career, Former World No. 1 Roger Federer broke down details of some prominent matches he has played.
Beginning with his third round match at the Grand Slam tourney back in 2000, he watched the snippet of his match against French player Arnaud Clement. Roger mentioned how he lost back to back to Clement at the Happy Slam .
“I struggled against him early in my career because he had a good transition game. He could defend and also play on the attack. You know, I was a bit wild at the time, a fiery character and everything. And that made it difficult for me to play against him,” Federer decoded his endeavours against the French player.
The Swiss tennis pro went down memory lane as he spoke about his juniors in the year 1998 and qualifiers in 1999. The following year, that is, 2000 was Roger ‘s first tour and such a game was ‘definitely new to him that year.’
However, Federer ‘s favourite memory of that year would be his match against the American tennis pro Michael Chang. The Former world no. 1 stated that it was a ‘big moment’ for him.
The grass court champion Roger Federer also reminisced his first Australian Open win
The 40 year old claimed his first Happy Slam title back in the year 2004. Cherishing the day his successful day at the tournament, he shared- “Also, a couple of days earlier, I was able to clinch world number one for the very first time in my career, after beating Ferrero (Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain) in the semis.”
Referring to his 2004 final at the tennis event Down- Under, Roger said- “This was playing Marat Safin in the the final, a good friend of mine at the time and still today. We used to play doubles together as well, maybe even in that year in Gstaad in Switzerland. He had a great tournament there as well.”
Federer shared how he remembered Marat Safin smashing some racquets and that how the latter got beat him in the following year.
Moving on to his 2009 final at the Grand Slam event against Rafael Nadal, the Swiss champ mentioned that it was one of the best matches between the two of them. “I thought we both played great tennis. This was maybe one of the best matches I think we ever played against each other. It was incredible what he was able to dig out,” decoding how he played aiming to defeat Nadal in that match.
Although, in 2009 Rafael won against Roger, in 2017, the latter claimed his title back against Nadal at the same ground.
Furthermore, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are teaming up once again for Team Europe at the Laver Cup later this year.
