QATAR EXXONMOBIL OPEN

March 11, 2021

Roger Federer

Press Conference

N. BASILASHVILI/R. Federer

3-6, 6-1, 7-5

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You said yesterday at this stage in your comeback you'd be kind of equally happy with defeat as a win. I wonder if this still rings true today now that you have lost? And just your general thoughts on the match.

ROGER FEDERER: Yeah, no, it still rings true to me. Look, I come from so far away that I'm actually happy that I was able to play back-to-back three-set matches against top players. That's an important step forward to me.

Like I said, I'm not 100% yet. I can feel it. I can see it, you know. From that standpoint, important is to be 100% by the grass court season. I know that. I'm still building up.

So this is a steppingstone. I'm actually happy how I felt today on court overall. I felt better against Dan, you know, physically I would think naturally, but I think Basilashvili plays a totally different game to Dan. How do you say? What Dan can't do, Nikoloz can do and vice versa.

So I think from that standpoint today it was a completely different game, and that's why I also probably struggled a little bit more.

Q. I know you just got off the court, but do you have an idea if you want to play Dubai? What are the factors that will make you decide if you're going to play or not?

ROGER FEDERER: No, I haven't decided yet with the team. I was going to speak to them once the tournament is over here. That's the case now. So we're going to do that probably tomorrow at some point or tonight, depending.

But I didn't want to talk about it after yesterday. Important was to rest and just think about the next match and actually enjoy also, honestly, the victory from yesterday was a big one. I got a ton of messages. Everybody was so happy for me. I was really happy. From that standpoint I'll decide probably in the next 24 hours, I would assume.

Q. You said you weren't going to have an ice bath last night, that was quite funny, but did you feel stiff when you woke up? Was there a little more aftereffect than if you were playing on the tour regularly?

ROGER FEDERER: Yeah, I mean, I honestly expected to feel this way. You know, the whole shoulder is really, I feel the muscle pain around that.

I didn't expect it to be honest here in the shoulder because I have been serving the whole time, but that comes I think with the pressure and just, you know, in matches you just go that extra percent, 5%? I don't know what it is.

But when you've got your back against the wall, you've got to crank one out. I tried to do that time and time again against Dan. But, you know, once everything warms up -- actually I felt overall today it was a more level performance, whereas yesterday I felt really up and down. But the rallies were also played totally different, like I explained before, against Basilashvili.

He pushed me much more into the forehand corner whereas against Dan was very much running around with his slice, keeping the ball low, and I think that was a challenge.

Overall the body is actually fine. I'm happy. You know, it could be much worse. I mean, there was always, you know, a little bit within me that thought, you know, how am I going to feel after a brutal first-round match? That's what I was thinking about going into the tournament, and how would I feel the second round? I was always worried that maybe I couldn't play it for whatever reason.

I felt fine. You know, little stiff in the morning, but that's totally normal I think.

Q. You have been saying that you hoped to get to peak fitness in time for the grass court season. I wonder, has that been a target all the way along because you feel Wimbledon maybe offers you your best chance of success at a slam? Or is it just that's the earliest you feel you can get back to peak fitness?

ROGER FEDERER: I mean, I might be better earlier, but that would be a bonus and that means I'm at 100% much before Wimbledon.

But no, to be honest, when I took the second surgery I was definitely eyeing more for the Australian Open or something at that point. But when I saw the progress was slow and I had to be careful and I had lost all muscles basically, we knew that we're going to pick a schedule that's going to make the Australian Open really close, and, yeah, you can see like this -- I mean, I could have played the Australian Open like this but worse, and I'm not winning the Australian Open this way. That's why there is no point of going there.

Now after doing what we were able to really do, finally play some points and now play a match, I knew and we knew that I still need another five, six weeks in fitness, probably a little bit more down the road.

So in those next, I don't know how many months that is till Wimbledon, maybe four months or so, I think we've just got to take a real good look at the schedule and see when we do the fitness with Pierre, what I still need to do in terms of rehab with Danny, my physio, and then with the tennis coaches and just see how much workload can the body and the knee still take and what's the best way to prepare all the way for basically the beginning of the season for me, which is the grass court season.

Q. You said the beginning of your season is grass, but don't you think that also for your knees and the physical condition clay is very important?

ROGER FEDERER: I think matches are important. What comes before the grass courts are the clay courts. So from that standpoint, I have no choice but to play on clay if I want to play matches.

So like you said, it could be good for me, the clay. It could be bad for me, the clay. So I will only know in practice, but I don't think it's going to be bad, to be honest.

I assume I will play some clay, you know. The question is what. We have a vague idea, but we said let's wait for Doha and potentially Dubai to potentially make any decisions for that, and fitness comes first and then we'll see what comes after.

Yeah, so, I mean, at the end everything is geared towards the grass. So whatever makes me be 100% there, I will do.

Q. The other day at your pretournament conference you say that the story is not over yet. Yesterday Juan Martin Del Potro said something similar, that he cannot close his story and that he feels he has something more to give. I would like to know if you will speak with him, if you miss him inside a tennis court, and what will you tell him about the new possible return to the court?

ROGER FEDERER: Look, I'm happy he said that, to be honest. I haven't heard about it. And of course I wish that Juan Martin can come back onto the tour like I did now. But the thing is when you've been at our level, you want to come back and feel like you can give more, right?

For me, this was a test, a true test to see how are things going to go, how are things. I hope for him he will find that rather sooner than later, but if it takes another month, two months, three months, however long it's going to take, I just wish he's going to come pack and then he will be finally healthy for good.

I know he has to take the time because everything he went through is even bigger than what I went through. So he's got to be very clever about his return to the tour, when he does it, how he does it. And the problem about matches is, you know, you go out there, you play in front of people. There is no pulling out, really.

In practice you can wake up and feel, oh, today we'll just maybe do an hour or we'll do an hour of fitness and an hour of tennis because I know I can control that.

But in a match you don't control things, and that is why you have to think twice how you return to the tour.

Q. Is this loss easy to get over because this is so early in a return, or is a loss a loss and it's always frustrating?

ROGER FEDERER: No, no, no. This one is super easy. I'm already over it. I mean, I would have loved to play tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, you know. But at the same time I'm also happy to get a rest. I'm happy how I played today. I'm happy how I did yesterday.

I'm happy I was back on the tour. I'm pleased I came here to Doha. So it's really, really a positive return for me. I'm really happy.

Q. You mentioned you had a lot of messages coming in. I mean, was it like sort of where your phone explodes when you win a big tournament? Who was texting you? Can you tell us a bit more about the support you had?

ROGER FEDERER: Yeah, it was similar to that, to be honest. I think a lot of my close friends and people around me were waiting for this return and that I finally did it and I was able to even win it. I think some people didn't expect that because they know what I went through.

Like you said, it was like winning a big tournament. Messages would keep coming in. Whereas normally I don't respond, I responded to them all basically just because I felt like, I don't know, I was on such a high. I was really, really pleased and happy yesterday. It was really a great day for me again to be back on the tour.