Roger Federer lost in the third round to Gael Monfils in a roller coaster match filled with tension (for Fed fans anyway), where I personally went from despair to hope and back to despair again. I'm not going to go through a break-down of the match - you can read that on multiple sites. I have actually been quite discouraged by this result all day, but as I have read some other posts and thought about it I realized that it actually wasn't as bad as I originally thought. Yes he lost when he maybe should have won, but it was a loss that I think showed some positive signs.
For one thing, you could tell how badly he wanted it. The obvious frustration, hitting the net with his racquet after missing a volley, muttering to himself, etc., showed that he is fully invested in trying to figure this out. Yes he made some bad errors (including a lot of misses at the net, which is rather puzzling), but he also displayed some brilliant play to show that it is still right there. And it certainly wasn't just him - Monfils actually played very, very well with some incredible clutch play when it mattered. There have been some matches this year where he just hasn't been there, not taking advantage of opportunities and kind of handing it to his opponent. In this case, though, other than the first game of the match, I felt he really was right there. It feels like in this match the wheels were spinning in his mind in a positive manner. I don't know when it will actually come together for him - it may be that Federer fans will still have to suffer through some disheartening losses where he just can't pull it off - but I just feel it in my gut that he still has some great days ahead of him where all of a sudden the sun will come out, everything will click, and we will be in seventh heaven after the discouragement.
After feeling depressed for a lot of the day, I was helped first by listening to his press conference in which he didn't sound in the depths of despair himself, and then especially by seeing his last tweet with this picture:
On another note I realized that it's kind of ridiculous for my blog to be called Crazy Tennis Addicts at this point when all I write about (at least during the time Roger is struggling) is Federer. So for now I am changing the name to Crazy Federer Addicts (though not the web address). At some point I will probably change it back, but for now Roger is my main focus.
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