{"id":152656,"date":"2025-09-22T07:20:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T07:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/152656\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T07:20:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T07:20:06","slug":"roger-federer-names-player-he-didnt-like-practising-with-for-one-simple-reason-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/152656\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Federer names player he ‘didn’t like’ practising with for one simple reason | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Federer<\/a> has admitted he didn\u2019t like practising with Andre Agassi<\/a> because the American would hit the ball too hard. The duo met 11 times throughout their respective careers, with the Swiss star winning eight of those matches.<\/p>\n

Federer dominated tennis for much of the 2000s as he won 16 of 27 Grand Slams between late 2003 and the start of 2010. In 2005, he took on Agassi in the US Open<\/a> final after winning his third consecutive Wimbledon<\/a> title just weeks earlier. Agassi couldn\u2019t get close to his rival at Flushing Meadows, with Federer winning the showdown in four sets. But it was on the practice court that Agassi appeared to get under the skin of the 20-time Grand Slam champion.<\/p>\n

Federer spoke about Agassi during an appearance on a live edition of Served with Andy Roddick<\/a>. And the 44-year-old explained: \u201cI didn’t like practising with Andre because it was just like bang, bang, bang. And I’m thinking it would be nice to roll a couple, hit a few, slice a few. And it\u2019s none of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s like three big shots and the fourth one just rockets past you like that. Anyway, that’s not how I train, you know, that’s also not how you do it [Andy]. I think we have high intensity, but we do different things.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s incredible, actually, how we can all practise and play in different ways and get to a successful place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federer then detailed the way in which he thinks tennis has evolved in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like there’s great returning, I feel like they return so easily nowadays,\u201d he stated. \u201cI don’t know if it’s conditions that are a bit slower or they are just better at it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking returns was hard. That\u2019s why I sliced, you know, just get it in. Just float it in there and figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federer added: \u201cMore baseline slog fest [nowadays], more heavy hitting. Forehand goes big, backhand goes big, forehand goes big, backhand goes big. Back in the day, every player used to have a little hole in their game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I see now, I think it\u2019s just getting more and more physical. And I think also everybody practises that way, they practise hitting hard like Agassi used to do. I think he was the first to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen Rafa [Nadal] came in, same thing. He\u2019s the sort of guy you don\u2019t want to practise with, just going big all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be the first to receive the latest tennis news, join our WhatsApp community<\/a> or newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Federer has admitted he didn\u2019t like practising with Andre Agassi because the American would hit the ball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[10371,10372,12701,6768,101,118,12700,56,54,55,116],"class_list":{"0":"post-152656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andre-agassi","9":"tag-andy-roddick","10":"tag-atp-tour","11":"tag-roger-federer","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-tennis-section","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom","18":"tag-wimbledon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}