{"id":191229,"date":"2025-10-05T11:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/191229\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T11:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:28:13","slug":"i-refused-to-train-with-roger-federer-he-wasnt-that-good-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/191229\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I refused to train with Roger Federer \u2013 he wasn’t that good’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tennis star once refused to practice with Roger Federer<\/a> because he didn\u2019t think he was good enough. The Swiss legend is regarded by many as the greatest player in tennis<\/a> history, although fans of Novak Djokovic<\/a> and Rafael Nadal<\/a> may hold a different view.<\/p>\n

Federer won 20 Grand Slam titles, including Wimbledon<\/a> a phenomenal eight times, before retiring in 2022.<\/a> However, right at the start of his career, there were doubters who had no idea how great he would become. One was Fernando Meligeni, a former French Open<\/a> semi-finalist, who was offered the chance to hit with a young Federer in the early 2000s. The offer was firmly rebuffed, with the Argentina-born Brazilian not believing he was up to it.<\/p>\n

Speaking to We Love Tennis,<\/a> he recalled: \u201cWe were in Hamburg, and Peter Lundgren, Federer’s coach, asked us to play with him. And we didn\u2019t want to. \u2018Federer isn\u2019t good, he doesn\u2019t play very well.\u2019 So we said no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining his rather brutal description of Federer, Meligeni expanded: \u201cFirst, because he broke everything, he was too nervous. His backhand was pretty bad, weak.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we played on clay, which he didn\u2019t play so well on either. Then he started playing better on hard courts, and clay came later. But that\u2019s typical.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, it wasn\u2019t long before Meligeni changed his view of Federer after losing to him in the doubles at the 2003 Australian Open<\/a>. He said: \u201cI was playing with [Anthony] Dupuis, a Frenchman. And he was playing with [Yves] Allegro.<\/p>\n

To be the first to receive the latest tennis news, join our WhatsApp community<\/a> or tennis newsletter<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was in the second round of the Australian Open<\/a>, and that’s when we realised he was actually playing really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast to Federer, Meligeni, now 54, was blown away by Nadal straight away after first encountering the Spaniard. He recalled: \u201cWhen Nadal appeared, I met him when he was 15 in Aix-en-Provence. He reached the final, I lost in the quarter-finals or semi-finals, and we had a chat in the changing room.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could tell that the kid played really well and that he was going to be great. [Spanish player] Alex Corretja told us, \u2018This kid is going to be number one in the world.\u2019 Sure, sure. And when I saw him play, I knew it. He played very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the \u2018big three\u2019 who dominated the sport for 15 years, only Djokovic is still playing.<\/a> The Serbian great, who remains sat on 24 Grand Slam titles, returned to action with a straight-sets victory over Marin Cilic in the second round of the Shanghai Masters.<\/p>\n

Playing his first tournament since the US Open and his first non-Grand Slam match since May, beat the big-hitting Croatian 7-6 (2) 6-4. Djokovic faces German qualifier Yannick Hanfmann in round three on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tennis star once refused to practice with Roger Federer because he didn\u2019t think he was good enough.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[22932,49,48,95485,54420,2189,82,593,1706,95486,614],"class_list":{"0":"post-191229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp-tour","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-fernando-meligeni","12":"tag-grand-slam-titles","13":"tag-roger-federer","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-tennis-section","17":"tag-tennis-doubts","18":"tag-wimbledon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}