Roger Federer seems like an extremely nice person. He certainly has confidence in himself, but he also is self-aware enough to know that he is not perfect. Is he among the best players ever (some would say the best)? Of course, and he is also arguably the best player in the long history of Wimbledon.Federer won eight Wimbledon titles, the most on the men’s side. Novak Djokovic has won seven, but trying to match Federer’s record is seemingly getting harder and harder to do. In other words, the Swiss’s number of eight might stand as the ultimate achievement for quite some time.
In a recent discussion with the Tennis Channel’s Steve Weissman, Federer joked about how in 2003 when he was facing Andy Roddick in the Wimbledon semifinals, had the American used a different brand of racket then possibly Roddick would have won. Federer has recently released a new collection of rackets with one of his sponsors, Wilson, and Roddick played with Babolat.
Roger Federer jokes about Andy Roddick’s 2003 Wimbledon choice of racket
Roddick, even though he is done playing professional tennis, still plays the sport and he recently switched his racket affiliation to Wilson as well. During the interview with the Swiss great, Weissman asked Federer if Roddick had played with a Wilson in 2003 would Federer have lost in the semis and not gone on to win his first Wimbledon title?
Federer responded by saying, “I think (Roddick) probably would have beaten me in the 2003 Wimbledon semis. And then what would have happened is, then I would have probably thought that I can’t win Wimbledon – and then I never would have won Wimbledon. So he had a lot to do with it if he would have changed to Wilson much earlier. He could have changed all of history!”
Of course, that is very unlikely to be true. Federer was the far better player and both he and Roddick know this to be the case. Plus, what kind of racket a high-end tennis player plays with doesn’t have much to do with winning and losing – it’s more about sponsorships – because if it did, every player would play with the same brand of racket that people were winning with.
Still, the joke by Federer proves his great sense of humor. Roddick would also probably laugh. He just likely did not find much amusement in losing to Federer in the Wimbledon semifinals in 2003.