Paris (AFP)
The Polish Hubert Hurkacz’s qualification to the semi-finals of the Indiana Wells American Tournament, the seventh of the thousand-point Masters tournament for this season, put the former “King” of the Swiss tennis world Roger Federer, crowned with 20 major titles, outside the top ten in the professional classification to be issued next Monday, for the first time. The first was about five years ago.
His absence from Indiana Wells due to injury cost him a loss of 480 points, in addition to Hurkacz, currently ranked twelfth in the world, on Monday to reach the final price of the American Games, which will make the Swiss drop from ninth to eleventh place.
Federer returned to the stadiums last spring after an absence from 2020, due to the “Covid-19” pandemic and knee surgeries. But after playing 13 matches since then, including the quarter-finals of Wimbledon, his third grand slam, he ended his season after the English Championship with a sore knee.
This prolonged absence from the stadiums led to his decline in the world rankings, where he was ranked fifth at the beginning of the year. Ironically, it was Hurkacz who knocked him out of the top ten, the same one who knocked him out of the Wimbledon quarter-finals last July.
Federer, who celebrated his 40th birthday this summer, entered the top ten on May 20, 2002, and was only out for a few weeks between July and October 2002 and from November 2016 to January 2017 when he suspended the 2016 season from July to treat his knee.
Despite his advanced age and knee problems, the Swiss is not thinking of ending his career. He said in mid-September: The worst is behind me and I look forward impatiently to everything to come, without revealing when he will return to the stadiums, considering that “it will take a little patience.
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