Roger Federer stays cool to shrug off Mardy Fish and burnout talk

 

Roger Federer aimed a thinly veiled attack at the injured Andy Murray, whose world No3 spot he will take if he reaches Sunday’s final. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

Roger Federer stands alone, again – naturally. In the space of a few days by the banks of the Thames the Swiss has reminded his weary peers as well as sniping doubters that 30 is a number no more significant than 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, the ones he put on struggling Mardy Fish on Thursday by way of limbering up for the semi-finals of the Barclay's ATP World Tour Finals, the game's last proving ground of the season.

After a third round-robin match, of no significance, he subtly deconstructed what he regards as the myth of burnout, an issue that has consumed others to the point of rebellion but has left him singularly unimpressed. As most of the seven others who started this tournament ruminate on their past bruises and more to come, il gran signore shrugs.

"My body, even if it's injured," he said earlier in the week, "can still play really well, whereas maybe other players, if they are injured, it doesn't work any more." It was the most unsubtle dig at Andy Murray, who had left the tournament on Tuesday with a groin strain.

At the moment Federer is floating above a sea of tennis turmoil. He has 20 gears and needed perhaps half of them to beat Fish, the 29-year-old American with nothing to lose and nothing to win, as he had already failed twice in the round-robin series. Homesick Mardy had his parents, Sally and Tom, in the stands but the American was a long way from home on Thanksgiving Day and a similar distance behind Federer at the end.

Fish won 93% of his first serves; the previous night David Ferrer's numbers against Novak Djokovic were similarly impressive: 92. Clearly, to compete with the best, players need to have their serve cranked to near-perfection.

But Federer remains the master of court manipulation, whatever the strength of his opponent's serve. When Fish served at 2-5 to stay in the match he was nowhere near as cool under pressure as Federer had been in a similar situation in the second set half an hour earlier, but he hung on. In the end he looked happy to be in the presence of a player whose gifts are so great their diminution is, for the moment, barely discernible.

After his calm demolition of Fish in an hour and 47 minutes Federer expanded on his thesis that the game is panicking for no reason.

"Next year's season is going to be shortened by two weeks," he said when asked if the season was too long. "That's as much as we can squeeze it, otherwise a lot of tournaments would have to go – or we would have four tournaments the same week, which I don't think is a very smart idea.

"The whole boycott thing [as mentioned by Murray, Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick at the US Open], it's nonsense. The season's always been long, tough and gruelling. Maybe it's more physical. But I've played 10 years straight, 60-plus matches [a year], if not 90 at times. It's about how you manage your schedule."

So, no sympathy for Djokovic, the world No1, whose tired legs betrayed his ennui in a straight-sets defeat by Ferrer in an hour and 15 minutes the night before.

From ennui to Henry, then. Federer spent the evening away from the torture chamber in Greenwich watching Arsenal with his old friend, Thierry, and revealed the French player had begged him to come to the Emirates. "I said: 'Just let me try to beat Rafa first. If I'm through in the group, there's a good chance I'll come.'"

He went. "I'd ask him a question, why would they play this way, why did they do that, what does that player do well? He can explain all these things. He's like a manager. I was able to go down on the pitch, go in the locker room, meet the players. They were extremely happy." As they should be.

It was only the second match he has seen live in England, after England v Argentina at Wembley 11 years ago. May he soon have more time for Mirka [Federer's wife] and the twins, or are there goals left? "I guess I do play a bit for the legacy and the history, the record books. But it's really the press that remind me of most things. I just go along with it. I have no intentions to quit."

If Federer reaches Sunday's final, he will take back the No3 spot he surrendered to Murray on the Scot's exhilarating run in Asia. If he does not, it will be a surprise given the quality of his tennis this week.

If he wins his sixth title? Well, his vast army of fans will be encouraged to believe in the second coming of Roger. Is he excited about getting back to No3? As you might expect from someone who was No1 for so many years, no. "It doesn't mean the world to me," he said. But Federer still means a lot to the world of tennis.