Salzenstein apologizes to Federer for predicting he'd never become #1 again!

Original article: (http://www.jeffsalzensteintennis.com/roger-federer-tennis/)

#1, he’s older.  He is close to 30 years old.  Certainly he can win more grand slams at this age but he’s not getting any younger and the other players on tour are younger and hungrier.

#2, he has a family.  I don’t care what you say.  You’ve got twins, you’ve got two kids, you’re busy changing diapers.  You have a nanny but you have responsibilities that you didn’t have when you were 24 years old.  So having a family and being older are twohuge reasons why Nadal and Djokovic are going to continue to have his number throughout the rest of his career in my estimation.

#3, he’s not as physical as those other two dudes right now.  Djokovic and Nadal are the two most physical players on the tour and Federer simply cannot much them.  He’s a great physical specimen but he does not match up to those two guys right now and it’s not going to change.  I mean his movement is amazing, but again he’s just not as dominant with his movement as he was a couple of years ago.

The fourth reason why I feel like Roger Federer will not be the same and will not be number one again is that he cannot overpower these guys with his serve.  Yes he’s got an amazing serve, yes he can serve north of 120, even 125 when he wants to, but he doesn’t have that dominating serve like Pete Sampras had where hey, maybe Pete’s struggling with his backhand but he can just hit two or three aces a game.  That’s the big difference between a guy like Sampras and a guy like Federer.  Federer is more well-rounded than Pete Sampras but he had that gun and you just can’t replace that, that huge serve.  You can’t get around that.  He’s got the huge serve that from 10 years ago that nobody could really touch, Federer just doesn’t have that.  And because he’s a more all-court player, the other all-court players are doing a better job hanging with him.  He just doesn’t have that explosive serve that a guy like Pete had back in his day.

And the last reason why — well there’s more reasons — but the fifth reason today why Roger Federer will not be the same is that he cannot hurt Djokovic and Nadal with his one-handed backhand.  In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb right now and say that there will never be another number one player in the world that has a one-handed backhand.

Now, some of you out there might completely disagree with me.  That’s okay if you do.  But I just think the game is moving to more and more physical style.  The two-handers, you need to be able to play defense off with a two-hander and Djokovic and Nadal play defence and even offence better than Federer with their two-handed backhands and they know they can serve the one-hander and they can attack the one-hander and keep it to that side to continue to have their way with Roger.

And here's the apology:

I was wrong about Roger Federer never becoming number #1. I underestimated his desire and commitment to get back to the top of the game.