{"id":30438,"date":"2020-12-14T10:13:58","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T15:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=30438"},"modified":"2020-12-14T10:13:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T15:13:58","slug":"roger-federer-unsure-of-2021-australian-open-participation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2020\/12\/14\/roger-federer-unsure-of-2021-australian-open-participation\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Federer Unsure of 2021 Australian Open Participation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>20-time Grand Slam winner Roger Federer is a major doubt for the 2021 Australian Open, admitting his rehabilitation has taken longer than expected and he is still not at 100%.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/amp\/s\/in.mobile.reuters.com\/article\/amp\/idINKBN28O0DU\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Speaking at an awards ceremony<\/a> in Switzerland in which the 39-year-old was honoured with a distinctive prize for being the Best Swiss Male Athlete of the last 70 years, he said, &#8220;I wish I was more ready but at the same time I\u2019m happy where I stand. We had a plan and decided to take as much time as we need. I\u2019m still not at 100 per cent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Roger Federer elected the &#39;Best Men&#39;s Athlete of the last 70 years&#39; in Switzerland. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kxoZ7Cyqah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/kxoZ7Cyqah<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jos\u00e9 Morgado (@josemorgado) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/josemorgado\/status\/1338240907200565248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">December 13, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Federer hasn&#8217;t played in nearly 12 months, with his last match coming at this year&#8217;s Australian Open semifinal where he lost to Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n<p>He has since undergone two knee operations, and even with a rescheuled date of the upcoming first major of the year, the 6-times champion at Melbourne Park confessed his chances of participating down under next February are slim.<\/p>\n<p>Federer added, &#8220;It&#8217;s a race against time for the Australian Open. I&#8217;m curious to see whether it will start on February 8.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course, it would help if I had a bit more time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tennis Australia is working closely with the Victorian government to move the dates from its original 18th January to 8th February to incorporate a period of mandatory quarantine for all players and staff as a measure to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 infections.<\/p>\n<p>The former World No.1 is confident of one last swansong at least during the summer, with his priority firmly on Wimbledon and the Tokyo Olympics &#8211; the latter where he is still searching for an elusive singles Gold medal.<\/p>\n<p>Since making his debut at the 1999 Australian Open in which he lost in first round of qualifying, Federer has appeared in a record 21 successive Australian Opens.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2017, he made a spectacular comeback from a similar position, recovering from knee injury to win his first Grand Slam in five years. But after defending his title a year later, he is yet to add to his Grand Slam tally which stands at 20 &#8211; level with his old rival Rafael Nadal who equaled Federer&#8217;s record at this year&#8217;s French Open.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/633006714\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 67.34007% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/633006714?et=MAXNYgQ8Tn1dUfkfKj57XQ&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=cOH7xCz8fQjCfU6qtbb2gvkGPMSjTifrOsIN2HpV8Xo=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Federer is adamant he will play apart in the upcoming 2021 season, but he did not rule out he may have played his last match.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope there is still something to see from me next year,&#8221; he added. &#8220;But if that was it, that would have been an incredible ending for me at these Sports Awards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1202943310\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.66667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1202943310?et=ZCy0Aqr0TZNDpCN0CmDFPg&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=19JTUs42wP7QAEVrtPEveolwz4eUcUi7jo0eh474Ips=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>20-time Grand Slam winner Roger Federer is a major doubt for the 2021 Australian Open, admitting his rehabilitation has taken longer than expected and he is still not at 100%. Speaking at an awards ceremony in Switzerland in which the 39-year-old was honoured with a distinctive prize for being the Best Swiss Male Athlete of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":30443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,2,9,11519],"tags":[11369,18,259,205,9312,1252,114,2526,13288,13289,2633,48],"class_list":["post-30438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-australian-open","category-featured","category-news","category-tennis","tag-2021-australian-open","tag-atp","tag-atp-tour","tag-australian-open","tag-federer-tennis","tag-mens-tennis","tag-roger-federer","tag-roger-federer-australian-open","tag-roger-federer-injury","tag-roger-federer-olympics","tag-swiss-tennis","tag-tennis"],"modified_by":"Steen Kirby","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}