"Do you think you can win?" Roger Federer on his Roland Garros return

It was the most straightforward question Roger Federer was asked Friday at Roland Garros, where the 20-time Grand Slam champion will compete for the first time since 2015. It wasn't a two-part or three-part question (there were three of those), a multi-sentence question (every other question), or a question asked solely so Federer could help a journalist with his or her homework. One of those was about Federer's lone French Open triumph, 10 years ago; another was about, of all players, Dustin Brown:

Q. I'm working for a portrait of Dustin Brown. I was wondering if you could tell me a word about him.

Federer's answer to the peculiar question, thoughtful as it became, began with the following fact:

ROGER FEDERER: Unfortunately, I never played him.

But the most straightforward—and shortest—question of the lot was also the most interesting, because it was the most revealing. Brevity is the soul of good questions and answers:

Q. Do you think you can win this tournament?

It's a question that could probably only be asked to Federer. His resume includes a win at Roland Garros, and he's played well in 2019, but he isn't considered a serious title contender in Paris. His return to clay has gone as well as could have been expected, after two years away from the surface, and he's the Miami champion and Indian Wells runner-up. It's hard to recall a No. 3 seed whose championship chances have been ignored quite like Federer's at this French Open.

Ask the question to Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic or Dominic Thiem and you'll be laughed out of the room—they are confident in their chances. (He wasn't asked it, but here's Djokovic's full presser.)

Ask the question to a much-lower ranked player and they'll take the notion as an affront, even if their Vegas odds are somewhere in the range of 100 to 1,000 to 1.

In case you were wondering, here are the odds for the men's French Open title contenders, as Labrokes sees them:

• Rafael Nadal 5/6

• Novak Djokovic 12/5

• Dominic Thiem 13/2

• Stefanos Tsitsipas 20/1

• Roger Federer 25/1

• Alexander Zverev 33/1

• Juan Martin Del Potro 50/1

• Fabio Fognini 66/1

• Borna Coric 80/1

• Daniil Medvedev 80/1

• Diego Schwartzman 80/1

• Felix Auger-Aliassime 80/1

• Gael Monfils 80/1

• Karen Khachanov 80/1

• Kei Nishikori 80/1

• Stan Wawrinka 80/1

• Cristian Garin 100/1

Federer, as he always does, took the question in stride:

ROGER FEDERER: Don't know. A bit of a question mark for me. Some ways I feel similar to maybe the Australian Open in '17. A bit of the unknown. I feel like I'm playing good tennis, but is it enough or is it enough against the absolute top guys when it really comes to the crunch? I'm not sure if it's in my racquet, you know. But I hope I can get myself in that position deep down in the tournament against the top guys, you know. But first I need to get there and I know that's a challenge in itself. Yeah, it's definitely going to be an exciting tournament mentally to go through.

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The 2017 Australian Open is a good comp, a tournament Federer began with measured expectations. Federer's admission of "don't know" signals another little-to-lose mentality—never a good thing for the Swiss' opponents, who will all feel like they're playing a road game.

"I'm not sure if it's in my racquet," was, to me, the most telling thing Federer said, especially considering his loss to Thiem from two match points up in Madrid, and win over Borna Coric from two match points down in Rome. These strange results, and Federer's overall lack of clay-court play—he withdrew from Rome before his next match, with injury—makes Roger a tough read at Roland Garros.

If Federer wants to rekindle memories of the 2017 Australian Open, an absolute career-changer when it comes to his legacy, he'll probably need to win some five-setters; he won three of them two years ago in Melbourne. Could the first come against Lorenzo Sonego, in the first round?

"I feel like before every Grand Slam of course if you can avoid tough, long matches in the beginning, it's going to increase your chances for the tournament later on," said Federer. "But in some ways I'm happy to be here and I just want to get through that first round to get the campaign going. That's my focus right now, not think too far ahead."