New York and the US Open finally got the chance on Wednesday to give Roger Federer the farewell he had long been denied. Seven years after his last appearance at the iconic Arthur Ashe Stadium, where he had suffered a quarter-final loss to Grigor Dimitrov in 2019, the Swiss legend returned to the scene of five of his greatest triumphs.
He won both matches before being given the farewell thatNew York had never really got to stage for him as a professional player. At the time, Mirka was pregnant, and it was the super summer: I had won the French Open shortly before. So for me to come back the year after and win it that way, with everything riding on the match, felt like a huge deal. “Of course you have some minor regrets where you’re like, I wish I could play that shot again, or I wish I could play that match again.
Organisers put on a spectacular drone show celebrating his five US Open titles, won consecutively between 2004 and 2008, as Federer sat alongside his fellow tennis greats. “I think when I beat Roddick at Wimbledon — 16-14 in the fifth — in ’09. “It’s also when I broke the all-time Grand Slam record, and Sampras, whose record of 14 Grand Slams was broken by me, was there. And it was the year after I had lost to Nadal in the final, 9-7 in the fifth.
Because they broke my streak of five in a row,” Federer said, two of them are actually linked to the US Open and to Wimbledon,.
There was a lot riding on it,” he said.
The first was a one-set singles match against longtime rival Andy Roddick, followed by a one-set doubles contest in which Federer teamed up with John McEnroe to face Roddick and Andre Agassi. Federer returned to the US Open for the first time since 2019 to feature in two exhibition events during Fan Week.
I feel like I have a lot — maybe when I beat [Lleyton] Hewitt in my first US Open [in 2004], 6-0, 7-6, 6-0. “The best match I ever played? I just played in a dream state, and to do that in my first US Open final was like, Wow — I can reach these heights.
His first triumph in New York came in 2004, against Lleyton Hewitt, a player Federer described as “one of my biggest rivals at the time”. I was shocked at my own game,” Federer told Vogue.
