Federer announces plans to compete at 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Wimbledon
- 14 Oct 2019
Roger Federer announced on Monday he will compete at next year’s Tokyo Olympics in a bid to claim the men’s singles gold medal, the only major prize he has yet to win.
“I’ve been debating with my team for a few weeks now, months actually, what I should do in the summer time (of 2020) after Wimbledon and before the US Open,” he said at a promotional event.
“At the end of the day my heart decided to play the Olympic Games again.”
Federer has won all four of the Grand Slam tournaments, as well as the ATP Tour Finals six times, but is still waiting to grab Olympic singles gold.
The 20-time Grand Slam champion did win a doubles gold alongside fellow Swiss Stan Wawrinka at Beijing in 2008, but when he got to the London singles final in 2012 he was hammered 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 by an inspired Andy Murray.
Federer did not compete at Rio 2016, where Murray won again, but has since twice won the Australian Open and took the 2017 Wimbledon title before losing an epic final in the grass-court Grand Slam to Novak Djokovic earlier this year.
Serbia’s Djokovic, and Federer’s eternal rival Rafael Nadal, have both already said they will compete at Tokyo, the trio setting the scene for a highly competitive tournament.
Nobody will be writing the ageing triumvirate off.
The 32-year-old Djokovic is world number one and the player poised to take top spot off him in the coming weeks is Nadal, 33.
The 38-year-old Federer is third in the world rankings, while Nadal and Djokovic won all four Grand Slams between them this year.
The two-time defending Olympic champion and three-time Grand Slam winner Murray, coming back from his January hip surgery, is yet to announce his intentions for Tokyo.
Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Medvedev, Thiem and Tsitsipas have booked their places for the ATP Finals, with two spots still up for grabs for the tournament in London.
Zverev reached his first ATP Masters 1000 championship match of 2019 at the Shanghai Masters.
The German recorded wins against Jeremy Chardy, Andrey Rublev, Roger Federer and Matteo Berrettini to earn 600 ATP Rankings points and jump one position to seventh in the ATP Race To London. The reigning Nitto ATP Finals champion is bidding to make his third straight appearance at The O2 in London.
Meanwhile, American prodigy Coco Gauff continued her rise up the ranks of women’s Tennis on Monday when the WTA rankings showed a climb of 39 places to number 71 in the world.
Gauff started last week in Linz at 110 and was originally set for an early departure from Austria after losing in the qualifying rounds before grabbing a lifeline as a lucky loser.
She went on to beat 2017 Roland Garros winner Jelena Ostapenko in the final for her maiden title.
It marks a meteoric rise for the young American -- at the end of 2018, she was 686 in the world.
Another good performance in Luxembourg this week could see her knocking on the door of the top 50.
There was no movement in the top 20 with Ashleigh Barty retaining the number one spot for another week.
Agencies
