he said this about Djokovic game after Montreal 2007
In the post match press conference, Federer was asked if he saw and respected the similarities between his game and Djokovic's, as compared to the differences between his and Nadal's and his response was:
"No, not really. I mean, he plays like many other players on tour. You know, I mean, he's steady off the baseline, he's got a pretty good serve. But...nothing outrageous in his game. Always pretty predictable, which is a good thing. Yeah, you get some good rallies against him because he scrambles well, moves to the ball well, moves the ball around very nicely. Yeah, I enjoy playing against him."
Although there's nothing directly insulting in that statement, it's hardly laudatory. And notable is a lack of appreciation for 1) any comparison to his own game, 2) Djokovic having beaten the top 3 players in the same tournament (Roddick, Nadal and Federer), or 3) winning his second Masters 1000 of the year (he had already won Miami). So one could hardly argue that he played like "many other players on tour" - after all, had many others on tour won two Masters 1000's that year? And if you didn't know any better, you'd almost interpret his throw away statement, that he enjoys playing him, because he's predictable and there's nothing outrageous in his game, as a euphemism for the guy being easy pickings!
He went on to say, in assessing his game that day that:
"I could never really breathe. Maybe that was a bit my problem today. It's such a pity, you know, when I start a match against a player like him serving so bad in the opening game."
Now, if I were Djokovic, I wouldn't take too kindly to being referred to as, "a player like him" - if it were meant as a compliment, it would be prefaced or modified with, "a tough player like him", or "a player who returns as well as him" - but in the absence thereof, it just seemed he was lamenting that conditions and an unusually bad serving day was the cause of the result, and not anything Djokovic did!
) as well as a kind of reflexive psychological self-defence. It manifested after the 2008 Wimbledon final ("lost because of a bit of bad light"), 2009 AO final ("sometimes the better player loses"), and perhaps most notoriously of all, that cringingly sour-grapes display after the 2011 USO semi ("Confidence? Are you kidding me? I mean, please. Look, some players grow up and play like that. Just being down 5-2 in the third, and they all just start slapping shots......that's the kind of way they grew up playing when they were down." )
