Roger Federer’s career is studded with great successes and incredible records: with 20 Slams he is the record holder but the Swiss Maestro has achieved other great goals, such as eight triumphs at Wimbledon, the weeks as world no 1.
and the titles on the grass and hard courts. For each season, however, there is a particular goal, an achievement that should be highlighted. The Swiss Mastro won his last ATP Finals titles in 2011; a record that still stands today, nine years later.
Federer got his sixth ATP Finals’ win at the end of a season that could best be called a chiaroscuro. For the first time in eight years, he did not win a Slam title and, in the year he turned 30, many of his deductors and insiders began to think that this was a sign of the end of his career.
In 2011 he won a total of four titles, but the most surprising statistic was the distance between the first title he won (8 January 2011 in Doha against Nikolaj Davydenko) and the second (6 November 2011 in Basel, against Kei Nishikori), almost ten months later.
A few weeks later he won in Paris-Bercy against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. In the middle of the season, he lost the French Open final against Rafael Nadal and the Dubai final against Novak Djokovic. At the ATP Finals, he played his round-robin against Rafael Nadal, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Mardy Fish.
The Swiss defeated Nadal (6-3 6-0), Tsonga (6-2, 2-6, 6-4) and Fish (6-1, 3-6, 6-3), qualifying for the semifinal, ma but suffering both against the Frenchman and the American. In the semi-final, he defeated David Ferrer in straight sets, for 7-5 6-3, at the end of a challenge more complicated than appearances and predictions, favorable to the Swiss on fast surfaces, against a player like Ferrer, clay-courts expert.
In the final he faced Tsonga again: after a spectacular battle, Roger won 6-3 6 (6) -7 6-3, avenging the sensational elimination in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon and winning his seventh title at the Finals, best seal of all its 2011 season.