This week, Roger Federer confirmed his switch to a bigger, Wilson 98 square inch racquet. Earlier today, he defeated Daniel Brands at the bet-at-home Open in Hamburg. Afterward, he addressed the press about his racquet change.
“I’m pleased how it’s playing,” said Federer. “I kind of knew it from practice, so it wasn’t like just jumping into the water, but I’m very happy that under match conditions I was feeling comfortable with it. I’m satisfied. I’ve been very close on numerous occasions to change racquets in a bigger way,” he said. “But then very often, time was the issue. Maybe also just the records of Grand Slams – I was always keeping on playing quarters and semis – so then it was also a bit more difficult to change it because of the time.”
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See more photos and video of Roger Federer testing blacked out Wilson racquet here.
“This time around, all of a sudden I just had the extra 10 days, two weeks I was looking for, and I really was very serious about it. Wilson flew to Switzerland and we went through the whole process and I was very happy how things went over there.”
While he did not elaborate on the specific changes, Federer called it a “different type of racquet”, sharing that Wilson has been working on the prototype for many years.
“I’ve been testing racquets, in a way, for my whole career,” said the 17 time grand slam champion. “I’ve had changes to my old racquet in the last sort of 10, 11 years ever since I changed here actually in 2002 from the 85 to the 90. We’ve always been in close contact and I know they’ve been always working on things. After I lost at Wimbledon, I thought this is a good time to go and test the racquets, to take a bit of time off and then add some tournaments and see was there enough time to change or not. I’m happy I did the change and now we’ll see how it goes. So far, so good.”
Source: ATP World Tour
See Roger Federer’s Nike outfit in Hamburg here. Watch full coverage of the 2013 bet-at-home Open on FF07tv.
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