By TennisWorld Contributing Editor Andrew Burton
Half a lifetime ago, I came to the US to study International Relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. One of my focus topics was Security Studies, which was run by a group of professors who we'd call neo-cons today. I think my lasting contribution to Fletcher culture was a verse in a song I wrote for the second year talent show, which highlighted the practice of handing over a neckwear memento to a visiting speaker:
It was pretty hard to get useful information about our Cold War adversary in the 1980s. If you studied the Soviet Union, you were familiar with the phrase Kremlinology: a practice of looking at the arrangement of figures on the podium during a May Day Parade, and trying to work out who was up and who was down by assessing whether a minister was three places to the right of the General Secretary, or five.
Roger Federer also enjoys a reputation for tightly controlling the information about his future plans - it was just over a year ago that we learned that his wife had been nurturing a future WTA doubles team rather than a potential future ATP singles champion. So Monday's announcement that Federer has begun exploring a working relationship with Paul Annacone was true to form - a brief "Dear Fans" note on the website, a few eMailed tidbits from Tony Godsick, then radio silence. I spent much of my day lurking at RF.com, where there was general contentment but very little additional information. (BTW, the "Next Coach For Roger?" thread there was closed last November at 261 pages, and its replacement is already up to 67.)
Someone at RF.com suggested that things were probably further along than they had been with Darren Cahill in March 2009, since Federer had made an announcement on his own site this time, while the Cahill "demo coach" visit to Dubai had just been leaked to the press (then confirmed by Godsick). This seemed to fit the bill of Wikipedia's comment on Kremlinology: "In popular culture, the term is sometimes used to mean any attempt to understand a secretive organization or process, such as plans for upcoming products or events, by interpreting indirect clues"
So is Annacone three places to the right of the key man, or two, or one?
Blowed if I know. I was tipped off the other morning by an eMail from one of TW's regulars, and when I came online to TW at 8am Calgary time Caroline had already posted that Pete had discussed a potential Federer / Annacone pairing as early as June 2007, in a post titled "The Deity's Apprentice."
Beyond just plucking a name from the air, Pete found Annacone's number in his Rolodex and dialed the guy. It's a fascinating interview - if I had had a chance to talk with Annacone I'd likely have asked about technical stuff, but Pete gets some lovely insights into the psychological dimensions of a player-coach relationship when the player is one of the greats of the Open Era. The post forms the basis for Pete's follow up yesterday, so if you haven't gone to either piece, well, do take the time to do so.
Since Pete's interview with Paul Annacone three years ago, Federer has mostly relied on his Davis Cup captain, Severin Luthi, for technical support. Luthi's never quite been seen as the full meal deal, either by the media or by fans. Federer has had relatively brief dalliances with Jose Higueras in 2008 and Cahill in 2009, but the official line on both is that long term engagements weren't possible because of the time commitments required. What was a bit odd is that they're supposed to have fallen apart for exactly the opposite reason: here I have a kind of lolcats vision of the conversations:
Six months later:
So Luthi kept his position as consigliere, with Federerologists analyzing snippets from press conferences like Federer-Falla, Roland Garros R64 2010, for signs that Luthi was now The Official Coach. With the news about Annacone, that possibility seems more remote than ever, but you can expect to see Luthi with Federer in warm up drills over this summer. Tony Godsick suggested that Annacone might travel to North America for some of the USO Series tournaments if he can work out his LTA commitments, but the Federer organization has taken pains to underline that Luthi hasn't been sent to a re-education camp.
If you just go by the stats, the Luthi Era has been pretty successful. One YEC in Shanghai, three Masters Shields, and six majors (Wimbledon 2, USO2, AO and - mirabile dictu - a Roland Garros). On Majors alone, that puts you in Becker/Edberg territory. But Federer fans feel there should have been more - more titles, certainly, but more improvement, more of a response to the emerging Land Of The Giants era in the ATP.
I'd count both Jose Higueras and Paul Annacone among these fans. Both men have talked about how a different set of eyes could help; both have stressed the need to keep improving; and both have conveyed a sense of seeing a supreme talent at work, yet one which wasn't quite fulfilling its potential. In an April 2009 interview with the New York Times, Annacone mused "He may choose to keep doing what he’s been doing and not tweaking, and that’s his choice as a champion. But for me it would be a shame. If you have a lot of weapons in your arsenal and choose not to use them, what’s the point in having them? It’s a matter of managing them a bit differently than he did a few years ago."
When Paul Annacone was talking about Federer's game in 2007, he - like most observers at the time - was asking "how to play Nadal?" Three years on, he - or anyone else who works with Federer - faces a different set of challenges.
Nadal is, once again, the main rival - one of the unquestioned greats of the Open Era, a threat on all surfaces. There are the new Big Hitters - Del Potro, Soderling, Berdych and (maybe) Gulbis. There are structural holes in Federer's game that weren't there in 2007 - there are long periods in matches where the flattened forehand, the moneymaker shot, falls apart, and the backhand topspin passing shot is now seen as frequently at Federer's matches as the twins are. Some fans point to the new family travel arrangements as a fatal distraction. And then there's the question of hunger - a 25 year old player with 10 major titles to his name is competing against history, and a 28 year old player with 16 is competing with - what?
The what, in the end, isn't a number - it isn't a ranking, or a record, or set of records, or a collection of miniature trophies. It's an honest assessment that Federer made the fullest use of all his talent, not just for a few years, but to the end of his career - however far out in the future that is. In the mythology of Federer's rise, there's the suggestion that the death in 2002 of his first coach, Peter Carter, both acted as a spur to greatness and a psychological warning not to invest emotionally in another coaching relationship. Pete Bodo is much more attuned than I am to the psychological forces that shape the way players behave, but it may take a significant shift on Federer's part to genuinely benefit from a top flight coach - to honestly accept that his own considerable talents and knowledge of the game has helped to steer him into a cul-de-sac, albeit in a very fancy neighborhood.
For my part, I think this is a very positive move: when Paul Annacone announced that he was leaving the LTA in May of this year, the chance that he might join Federer became a real possibility. I knew, of course, that Annacone worked for years with Pete Sampras, and since 2007 Federer has worked hard to build and deepen a relationship with Sampras. But I had forgotten until Monday that Annacone also worked with Tim Henman, who for many years was one of Federer's closest friends on the tour. So the chances that either Federer or Annacone goes into this trial period with little knowledge of the other's personality, style and approach to the business of tennis seems pretty remote.
Federer's losses to Soderling, Hewitt and Berdych in the two months after Annacone's announcement have only highlighted the urgency of the situation. After Federer lost to Berdych four weeks ago, I wrote to one of my TW buddies "I sincerely hope he snaps up Annacone when he becomes available." I hadn't expected Federer to make his move before the US Open, but I'm not complaining in the slightest.
How will we know if this move is successful? Well, we'll know for sure that it's been a failure if the trial ends the same way the Cahill session ended - with warm words sometime in August, and an eyebrow raising story about how things slipped through their fingers ("I had no idea that Roger wasn't ready to switch to a two handed backhand. After years of trying to persuade Pete and Tim to change, I'd promised myself never to work with a one hander again. Still, Roger's a class act.")
But most Federer fans are telling themselves to give it time - one promised, tongue in cheek, not to get too distressed if Federer failed to win Toronto, Cincinnati and the US Open this year without dropping a set. I'll be watching two things in particular - well, three. The return game, Federer's choices on transition plays, and that blasted backhand pass. If we see positive changes in any or all of these by the end of the year, my prediction is that the results will start to follow.
I am going to disagree with Pete (and some of my good friends on the InterTubes) on one possible change: I don't foresee Federer travelling without Mirka and the twins for the next three years. In fact, I'll make a friendly bet with Pete that Federer will still be on the tour three years from now, and Mirka will still be courtside for the majority of his matches, Blackberry or IPhone 6 in hand. Whether Paul Annacone is sitting next to her is the question du jour.
Even Superpowers need to change, but (ask Mikhail Gorbachev), reconstruction, or perestroika, is a tricky business. We're likely to see, over the next few months, how much change Roger Federer is prepared to embrace: for the last three years, on court at least, the answer has been "not much." The possibility of change is exciting, but it's also scary. Any attempt to bring about major reform carries with it huge downside risks as well. Be careful what you wish for.
-- Andrew