The last time Roger Federer won the first three big tournaments of the tennis season — the Australian Open and the two American hard-court Masters events in Indian Wells and Miami — was in 2006, when he was a 24-year-old in the midst of one of the most staggering stretches of sustained brilliance the sport has ever seen.
Eleven years later, Federer is dropping jaws!
The 35-year-old Swiss maestro defeated Rafael Nadal on Sunday in a tough 6-3 6-4 battle in the final of the Miami Open. It’s his first win at the tournament since 2006 and the third time he’s swept the three biggest events to start the year — he also did it in 2005, back during that period when he was going 68-2 in grand slams, with eight wins and two losses in finals.
At the beginning of the year, if you’d told Federer, who was ranked No. 17 in the world after sitting out the last five months of 2016 recuperating from a knee injury, that he would win in Melbourne, Indian Wells or Miami, he’d have surely taken it.
Federer hadn’t won a major in five years, hadn’t taken a Masters event in two years and had just two titles in his previous 26 starts at the aforementioned three events. Federer shocked the tennis world in Melbourne, capping an old-timer’s weekend that saw Serena Williams beat her sister Venus in the women’s final and then Federer beat his arch-nemesis Nadal in the men’s.
Federer was 10-23 against his younger rival, Nadal few months ago. A mark that would be on the only blemish on a nearly flawless career. Since then he’s improbably won four straight match-ups, three in finals. Only two other men have defeated Nadal four straight times (Nikolay Davydenko and Djokovic). Now, Federer is 14-23 against Rafa and 12-10 in matches not played on Nadal’s dominant clay. The head-to-head has gone from a stain to a tiny asterisk.
