20 Brilliant Roger Federer Passing Shots You've Never Seen Before! 

A neat observation. He really did lose his passing shot ability as he aged. Strange that he began to look for power though...very unlike him and something I never quite understood.

@@thesoccergod I believe part of it came with his new bigger frame, but it probably also has to do with explosive speed. Federer in the early years was prob one of the fastest players ever, only superseded by a young Nadal. He may have maintained his footwork but his court speed was prob a bit slower.

@@thesoccergod very funny that u find that strange. Those kind of passing shots require alot of speed and explosiveness combined. You not going to have both of those at your disposal for long periods of time when you age. It can be done in short spurts, but cannot be maintained right through the year the older you get. You probably think those passing shots he was pulling off doesn't require power because you just only watching the racket swing of his arm. Just take a look how low he has to load up his legs when on the run and transfer that weight forward while loading his core muscles to pull off those passes. That's alot of power. Later down in his career he had to trade off by utilizing his explosiveness more tighter on or inside the baseline. That itself takes time away from himself somewhat. Rafa and Novak also have implemented this to somewhat get more efficiency as they age. This is why the big 3 are so great. They find ways to maximize whatever limitations they have as they get older

i'd say the game changed. when he was coming up against a second-wind agassi (even if he was 30 at that point), or his peers like roddick and hewitt or safin, the courts were faster, the balls were different. players still came to the net. the game and the environment changed around 2007-2008 where players like nadal were slowly making progress and were able to grind out games. in those matches, his laser sharp passing shots were not useful anymore and he found himself in an attrition battle to win. even his serve was not killing it as much as it used to, especially at wimbledon. i would say the only tournament that remained true to itself, across eras, was the atp finals tournament. hence why nadal never won it, the whole thing is so fast that nadal cannot grind out a win there. not only that, even in the years when nadal had the upper hand on fed, the finals were where fed beat him sensless nonetheless. credit to the djoker for adapting his game to win an all surfaces. but his game is not the thing that made the djoker great, it was his mental strength. he's borg 2.0, not ice-cold, but outspoken, brash, and with the same robotic mentality. unreal. getting back to the plays fed made, the best example of a match he should have never lost was ao2009. the balls he hit, the angles, the sheer brilliance of some of the plays were well above the rest of the field. and yet somehow nadal made it. at wimbledon 2008 fed played poorly, even though with a little bit of luck, he would have won that, but ao2009 was a match in which he was better, by a lot, and still lost. the only other sport comparison i can make is the holland - italy at euro 2000. holland should have run away easy winners, but italy won it in the end. same here, sure, nadal maybe could have snatched a set, but the ones fed lost should have been his, other than the 5th. he collapsed.

@@BG-mw5pt I concur, you lose practice with the passes as well bc no one is approaching net. Then again, some the shanks and frames fed got on his older racquet on the bh side always made things awkward for people like Djokovic 🤣. No doubt that racquet changed his game to better Nadal but perhaps lose more easily to Djokovic. AO 09, USO 09, W 19 to a much lesser extent USO 10, 11 were all travesties.

Okay? Djokovic is still the better player and by your logic his play should be studied just as much, if not more than Federer’s. He is ahead of Federer in nearly every metric.

@@supertennis1 fed is 7-8 years older so their physical prowess can hardly be set to matched when they met most of the time and still it was always a very close match goes on to show that they are atleast equals and Federer had dominated him on many occasions when he was in full flow despite his age. He was superior in shorter matches and lost at majors more goes to show how longer matches favoured nole over fed because of their physical differences due to age. And people use that to say nole was the better player and same with Nadal. Even Nadal has himself said roger was the better player who wins a close match decided by 2 points doesn't show who the better player is it's skill and talent which the players themselves know best

MLR MLR I agree 100 % and thank you for expressing your view so well.

@@supertennis1 I do not agree and think you are very arrogant .

@@someshnarayan7368 Big 3 fans are so weird about these three men. Fed is 5-6 years older, not 7-8 years older. I am currently running into Djoker fans who state that Djoker is 36, Nadal fans who say he is 37, Fed fans who say Fed was he was not even turning 39 in the year they are talking about.... LOL, it's just funny to me. Especially so when Nadal and Djoker fans alike (Djoker fans mainly) have argued for years that age is meaningless.

2006 vs Ferrer :)

@@RazOls Ah. :)