Federer Has Something to Prove at this US Open, For a Change

Former world no.1 and defending champion Roger Federer has more
than a point to prove at this year's US Open. To his thousands of
fans, he need to show that he is not out yet, even though the aura
of invincibility is quickly fading, and to himself that he is still
a strong contender to win grand slams as it was in the past six years.

2008 till date has been a hard year to Roger Federer, and a year
since 2003 in which he had failed to win a grand slam tournament
before August. He had reached the finals of two slams in 2008, but
had failed to clear the final hurdle, which in both cases had been the
resilient and resolute Rafael Nadal. In the Australian Open semifinals,
he lost to Novak Djokovic. If that was understandable, as 2008 wore
down, he also went on to lose to lower ranked players like Blake,
Roddick, Ivo Karlovic, Gilles Simon, and Radek Stepanek, against whom
Fedex had won hands down just months back. Worse, outside grand slams,
he had won only at two tournaments, as opposed to eight last year.

These recent results worryingly points to the fact that the rest in the
ATP tour are fastly catching up with Federer, with some even managing to
get their hands on the key to unlock the Fedex puzzle. True, the bout of
mononucleosis at the start of the year had weaken Federer's game. But
even after recovery, he had failed to rediscover the magic that had
made him the remarkable player he had been just an year back. Now, the
US Open is the last chance Federer has got this year to redeem himself,
and show to the world that he is still right there on the top, and the
earlier losses this year were just an aberration in his otherwise
glittering career. The next two and a half weeks will show whether Nadal's
rise to world no.1 was temporary, or it really meant a change of guards.

Let's wait and watch until then!