Roger Federer has decided to get back on track, but he will do so with some conditions

Roger Federer’s return to the field has been confirmed for several months. The appointment awaited by the fans of one of the best tennis players of all time, inactive since July last year due to a problem in his right knee, is the Laver cupthat exhibition competition that he himself organizes and which will be held from 23 to 25 September at the O2 sand From London. To see him play for points we will have to wait a little longer: he will be in the tournament of basel, his home, from 24 to 30 October. What will happen after the race in the Swiss city, not even he knows for sure. Although in the last few hours the former world number one, 40, has confirmed that he hopes to play more regularly in 2023.

“Surely, this is the idea. How and where, I still don’t know”, he assured in a conversation with the media of his country, as part of the inauguration of a natural playground for children in a school in the city of Emmen, as part of his own foundation program.

The Swiss, winner of 103 professional titles, announced a few weeks ago that he will no longer play 20 tournaments per season and will put together a “smaller and more manageable schedule”. And now he has confirmed that for the rest of this 2022 he plans to only play in Laver and Basel.

“First of all it is important for me to get back in shape so that I can train thoroughly again. The Laver Cup is a good start, because I won’t have to play five games in six days. I should be able to do it in Basel. For that I have to prepare myself. well in training. And after Basel the season is over anyway. ”

The Swiss tournament will be played in the week preceding the Masters 1000 in Paris, the last appointment on the calendar before the ATP Finals, which will bring together in Turin, from 13 to 20 November, the best eight of the season.

Federer played his last game on July 7, 2021, when he fell in three sets against Pole Hubert Hurkacz in the quarter-finals of Wimbledon. The English Grand Slam was only his fifth appearance in a season in which he was dosing his efforts to not expect more from a right knee that wasn’t 100 per cent. But on the grass tour (Halle had played before going to London) the discomfort in the area reappeared and in August he announced that he would be back in the operating room to undergo knee surgery for the third time.

Then he went through rehabilitation which ended up taking longer than expected. Although he himself has assured this weekend that he is not expecting a very fast recovery.

“When they operated on me at the end of August, we already knew that I was going to progress little by little. Today they keep asking me. “How are you?”. I can say it will take a while longer. I just have to be patient. I am making steady progress. Now I’m going straight to the gym. And I do it five or six times a week. The goal is to be ready for those two tournaments that I want to play at the end of the year “, he explained that, due to his long inactivity, he has dropped to the 50th step of the ranking.

He added: “In the coming months I will have a lot more information, because now I am running out of space. I play with children from time to time. I could do a lot more, but for now we focus on fitness so that there is no overload. . Tennis still has to wait a bit. I’ll do enough when the time comes. “

Few certainties remain about the future of Federer’s career. And little more will be known as the healing continues, because as he has repeated over and over over the past ten months, he doesn’t want to be in a hurry and will only return when his body is ready. Many even dared to predict that his stint at Laver and Basel in the coming months would be a goodbye and that retirement was just around the corner. He himself was given the task of discarding that idea, confirming that he wants to return to the circuit next season.

“I’m curious to see what else to come. And I’m confident, I’ve been on the right track. I’m not too far away. The next three or four months are going to be extremely important,” he said.

Holder of 20 Grand Slams, a category in which for a certain period he was the most successful in history, Roger took a few minutes in the middle of his speech on his return to say nice words to Rafael Nadal, who a week ago he won 14th time at Roland Garros and won his 22nd Major title, extending the lead over him and Novak Djokovic in the list of best champions.

“I didn’t see the final, I watched the quarter-finals a bit before I went to sleep. It’s amazing what Rafa had. Pete Sampras’ record, which I broke, was 14 Grand Slams. Now, Rafa he has won 14 times at Roland Garros. It’s incredible. I’m glad he did it again. I take off his hat. After the tenth or eleventh time, I thought ‘It can not be’, but keep raising the bar. It’s huge, “Federer said of his great rival and friend. Will they meet again next year on a pitch?

The fun meeting with a fan

Federer has millions of followers and fans around the world. One of them, Vinicius Carmona Cardoso, was lucky enough to find him in a restaurant and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to show his love for the former number one.

Bravely, he got up from his chair and, from a distance, said: “Roger, I have your tattoo. You are my biggest inspiration and I didn’t expect to find you here”. And encouraged by his teammates, he walked over to show her her arm, where he had the silhouette of a tennis court tattooed next to the phrase “There’s no getting around the hard work. Hug it” (There is no way to avoid hard work. accept it), a maxim that the Swiss uses as a guide in his career.

In the video, which the same fan shared on his social media, Federer is surprised when he sees that what his follower said was true. “Hey, are you kidding me?”, he said amused, as he touched the ink to verify that it was real. Then he gave her a handshake, a hug and a photo.

“The day I tattooed Federer I was sure that one day I would meet him and show him what was under my skin. He continues to dream and work, because dreaming makes us give our best and then everything is possible. magic happens Reality. What a humble boy! ” Carmona wrote on his Twitter account.