Roger Federer seemed to be fresher than ever at 35, says ATP player
Roberto Ortega believes that now players compete at their best level when they get older. Speaking to Punto de Break, Ortega said: 'It helps a lot seeing 30-year-old players who are there and are improving. When I was 18 years old I was asked about my ranking and I was around the 350th. "Well, nothing happens, you will go up". Now we see that at 19 years being 350 does not mean you are amazing but it's not a bad ranking, despite people think that you have no options to breakthrough. You do not listen it a lot. Nadal is 32, and despite injuries, he is there. At 35 Federer was able to deliver his best tennis and he seemed to be fresher than ever. If you take care of yourself and you are willing, it does not matter if you are 27, 28, 29 or 30 years old.'
'I like that tennis is fast. What happens is that now you have players with who you cannot play, players who serve at 225km/h for three hours... In Challengers, you have players like these too, but instead of serving at that level for three hours, they do it for an hour and a half. If during that an hour and a half they won you are because you had no chances, but if the match gets longer the option that they drop in the third set is there. If you break them the match ends, that's where you find out why a player is the 140th and not in the top 20.'
'I trained with him. A year that I lost in the Mutua Madrid Open first round and I had some days left I remember that he asked me to play a practice set, at the time he was in the top 20. We started training and be careful about the plan: two minutes from the back of the court, two minutes of the cross and two minutes of the other, ten minutes of volleys... And 45 minutes of serves! I had never seen such a thing before.'
ALSO READ: Rafael Nadal: Worse players than David Ferrer won a Grand Slam title
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2EYC39e
No comments