Roger Federer is in the Australian Open final.
Yes, for many, many years, he stood tall, winning 17 Grand Slams, beginning 2003, when he won Wimbledon.
Nearly 14 years later, he is still there, having a great time.Either way, he will face his good friend, Rafa Nadal, who overcame Grigor Dimitrov in nearly five hours.
In 2009, they played each other in a final, when the Spaniard took him in five classic sets.
Will it be another amazing match?
That’s possible, but as Nadal said, things have changed. That are older and wiser.
said Nadal, who has won 14 Slams.
In July last year, both men were hurt. Federer stopped playing the rest of the year. Nadal stopped in the fall.
Now Federer is pretty healthy and raring to go.
Nadal will recover on Sunday night as he will have 43 hours to rest before he will walk on court.
Federer beat two top 6 guys, Kei Nishikori and Stan Wawrinka, in five sets. Apparently, his legs are strong.
“You can only do so much treatment to feel decent. What I’ve just come to realize is when you don’t feel well, you have too many problems going on, you just won’t beat top-10 players,” Federer said. “
At some point you reach a limit, and you just can’t go beyond that. You can play them tight. You might win one of them. You just can’t win back-to-back. Just not feeling free enough, in your mind, in your body.
“That’s where both, I guess, Rafa [Nadal] and myself said, ‘Okay, enough of this already. Let’s get back to 100%, enjoy tennis again, enjoy the practice. Not just practice, treatment, practice, treatment, match, treatment. All the time all you’re doing is fighting the fire.’
“From that standpoint, the six months definitely gave me something in return. I didn’t go into a direction where I felt like I had to reorganize my life or reorganize my tennis in any way. I just wanted to get healthy again. … I am super happy I was able to win another five-setter in a Grand Slam. I don’t know how many times I won two five-setters in a Grand Slam. Maybe never before. So this is big.”
Late at night on Friday/Saturday, Nadal was tired, very tired. Those two have played many times, but things have changed, or that’s what Nadal says.
“I think this match is completely different than what happened before,” Nadal said. “Is special. We have not been there in that situation for a while, so that makes the match different. I really don’t think about what happened in the past. I think the player who play better is going to be the winner.”
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