A tennis star once refused to practice with Roger Federer because he didn’t think he was good enough. The Swiss legend is regarded by many as the greatest player in tennis history, although fans of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal may hold a different view.
Federer won 20 Grand Slam titles, including Wimbledon a phenomenal eight times, before retiring in 2022. 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 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.
Speaking to We Love Tennis, he recalled: “We were in Hamburg, and Peter Lundgren, Federer’s coach, asked us to play with him. And we didn’t want to. ‘Federer isn’t good, he doesn’t play very well.’ So we said no.”
Explaining his rather brutal description of Federer, Meligeni expanded: “First, because he broke everything, he was too nervous. His backhand was pretty bad, weak.
“And we played on clay, which he didn’t play so well on either. Then he started playing better on hard courts, and clay came later. But that’s typical.”
However, it wasn’t long before Meligeni changed his view of Federer after losing to him in the doubles at the 2003 Australian Open. He said: “I was playing with [Anthony] Dupuis, a Frenchman. And he was playing with [Yves] Allegro.
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“It was in the second round of the Australian Open, and that’s when we realised he was actually playing really well.”
In contrast to Federer, Meligeni, now 54, was blown away by Nadal straight away after first encountering the Spaniard. He recalled: “When 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.
“You could tell that the kid played really well and that he was going to be great. [Spanish player] Alex Corretja told us, ‘This kid is going to be number one in the world.’ Sure, sure. And when I saw him play, I knew it. He played very well.”
Of the ‘big three’ who dominated the sport for 15 years, only Djokovic is still playing. 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.
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.
