On Saturday morning I wrote a post about why the ATP needs Novak Djokovic back at full strength. At the time, I thought that Djokovic, no matter how far from his best he is at the moment, is still the most likely player to mount a sustained challenge to the tour’s dominant duo, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

By the afternoon, one-half of that duo was no longer looking quite so dominant. It turned out that Federer could be beaten by someone other than Djokovic, after all. He could even be beaten by 175th-ranked Thanasi Kokkinakis. With that loss—his worst performance of 2018 so far—Federer fell from his perch at No. 1.

Match point from Federer's loss to Kokkinakis in Miami:

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By day’s end, not only was Federer no longer dominating, he wasn’t even playing. He announced that for the second straight year he’ll skip the clay season, and for the third straight year he’ll miss the French Open. Instead of needing Djokovic to challenge Federer, now the ATP may need the Serb to fill the potentially yawning Big 4 gap this spring.

“Yeah I decided not to play,” Federer said matter-of-factly, after losing to Kokkinakis. “I didn’t play great last week, either, I felt, overall. Nothing new, in my opinion. I’m trying to figure things out, so...I have time now.”

Federer said that against Kokkinakis, his movement wasn’t “absolutely working,” and “the ball, I wasn’t feeling.” This happens to every player at some point during virtually every tournament. On most days, Federer would have found a way to win anyway, or his opponent would have found a way to lose. To his credit, the 21-year-old Kokkinakis, who appears determined to claw his way back from injury and onto the big stage again, was good enough, and stubborn enough, to make Federer pay for his mistakes.

While an occasional loss by a 36-year-old is hardly a shock, it’s still amazing how quickly the landscape in tennis can change, and how much one defeat can mean. Federer had looked unbeatable this year, until he faced Juan Martin del Potro in the Indian Wells final. Even in that match, he held championship point three times before losing in a third-set tiebreaker. Yet that razor-close defeat may have been enough to give Kokkinakis the confidence he could beat Federer, and to rob Federer of any sense of invulnerability he may have built up this season.

Match point from Federer's loss to del Potro in Indian Wells:

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All of which means that, unfortunately for tennis fans, Federer is right to skip the clay swing again.

If he had blazed his way through Indian Wells and survived Miami, the way he did in 2017, I might have said something different. I might have said that he could take a month off, enter the tune-up in Rome, and take another run at Roland Garros, without playing himself into the ground.

Yes, Federer already has a French Open title, and yes, he’s 36. To me, the reason for him to go to Paris wouldn’t be about the challenge of winning the tournament. It would be about the challenge of beating one opponent: Nadal. Federer is 0-5 against Rafa at Roland Garros. He lost to him in four finals there, including three in a row from 2006 to 2008. Federer’s annual quest to win the French was eventually achieved, but it took Robin Soderling’s win over Nadal in 2009 to give him the opening to do it.

This doesn’t mean Federer has anything left to prove in Paris; he won it, and that’s what matters. But aren’t you curious to know how this Federer, the one who is on a career-best five-match win streak over Nadal, the one who suddenly turned the tables on his nemesis at age 35, would do against Rafa at Roland Garros? I wouldn’t actually expect Federer to win; I’m not sure I would even expect him to reach the final. But I also didn’t expect him to go 4-0 against Nadal in 2017, either. Now that Roger and Rafa won’t be meeting in Paris this spring, it’s seems highly unlikely that they’ll ever meet there again.

Unstrung: Should Roger Federer play the clay-court season?

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Alas, Federer is still doing the right thing by not playing. Last year, he came back from his clay layoff to win Wimbledon and finish the season 52-5, so you can’t fault him for thinking that it’s the prudent approach. When it comes to his scheduling philosophy in 2017 and 2018, I always go back to what he said at Indian Wells last spring.

“Rankings are completely secondary to me,” he said. “So if I take a decision after Miami, yeah, it’s basically of, you know, looking ahead, how can I remain healthy and how can I keep the fire and the motivation for the tournaments that I will be playing.”

“What I don’t want to do is overplay and just get tired of traveling and tired of just playing tournaments and just entering and, I don’t know, just doing people a favor just to be there with no aspirations...So that’s a promise I made to myself that if I play tournaments that’s how my mindset has to be and will be.”

It’s hard to argue with success, which means that it’s hard to argue with Federer.

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Unfortunately for tennis fans, Federer's right to skip the clay season

Unfortunately for tennis fans, Federer's right to skip the clay season

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