The End

Clay courts are a lost field for the former world number one Roger Federer and soon the whole circuit might just be a memory.

I was watching him on TV the other night at the Indian Wells tournament and my how he is struggling. He’s actually toiling. And overt labour has never been a facet of his game.

Federer has been a swan over the years. Above board silent and graceful. But though I'm a big fan, it seems he’s becoming a dinosaur, superseded by a generation of sluggers and grunters.

It isn’t going to get any easier as Federer is expecting his first child with his girlfriend in the summer. That happy event domestically may well be the prelude to total meltdown on the tour.

Federer lost in the semi finals at Indian Wells on Saturday night to the British fourth seed Andy Murray, his sixth defeat to the Scotsman in eight encounters.


Still, it will be a more entertaining final as Murray will play Rafael Nadal in Sunday’s showdown and there’s a chance that the Briton might make a final of it.

That can’t be said when Federer meets Nadal. He's lost so many of their battles that it just seems everyone humours him when he calls it a rivalry.

Sad to see but the smooth Swiss is unravelling. Someone needs to tell him to get a coach and a backhand because everyone is battering that wing it at the moment and the swan is flapping.