Respect to Federer. To do that after 2 knee surgeries and hardly any play, at 39. Well done that man.

Not sure what I think about him considering withdrawing to protect his Wimbledon interests. If he does withdraw, I think I feel he should have let koepfer go through by retirement. It seems unfair on him. He may of course still play and you could argue that he should only be concerned with his own welfare but it will sit uneasily with me if he does pull out.

junior wrote:

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Would be a smart move on his part, playing berretini, novak, nadal and stefanos over 1 week certainly won't help him, agree with withdrawing before or during the koepfer match, he won't withdraw though

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 I believe Fed has a great record compared to some for not withdrawing during matches. Maybe he wished to protect that rather than do what was arguably the right thing if he is to now withdraw and it was already on his mind. Might have been better to keep stoom at this stage. 

JonH comes home wrote:

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Not sure what I think about him considering withdrawing to protect his Wimbledon interests. If he does withdraw, I think I feel he should have let koepfer go through by retirement. It seems unfair on him. He may of course still play and you could argue that he should only be concerned with his own welfare but it will sit uneasily with me if he does pull out.

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 Maybe but you don't get to the top of a sport like Tennis without being hugely competitive. I think most of us have played a sport where even at a low level our competitiveness out does our sense and we don't realise until an hour or two afterwards that it was pretty stupid to continue playing. I know I've done that on more than 1 occasion.  To give Federer his due, it's really unusual for him to withdraw during a tournament and qt 39, just back from knee surgery, I'll give him a pass.

Now its clear - the French open is officially just the warm up for Wimbledon ! To be fair, berettini would have beaten him, so saves everyone the bother.

Medvedev reaches the QF by beating Garin in straight sets. His 4th win at RG this year, his 4th win at RG ever.

So he still could in theory be WR 1 after RG though I suspect that Tsitsipas ( straight sets winner over Carreno Busta ) will put an end to that in the QF.

I'm not keen on the way that Rafa & Fed are given so much leeway. Both exceptional players and legends but it's unacceptable that so many rules are bent or ignored to facilitate them.

It's an unofficial handicapping system that means the players ranked beneath them have to put up and shut up because lets face it dollar is king when it comes to scheduling.

I particularly dislike the sycophantic drivel from the likes of Courier.
There are exceptional players in both the mens and omens draw and they are successfully challenging the old guard , lets welcome them in and rebalance the coverage from ageing tennis commentators.

Rant over, no data to back it up. Apologies.