I'd like to believe that Federer was a victim of unlucky timing at the end. He was going strong as late as the 2020 Australian Open, until he suffered the injury in the QF. He barely won that match, but the injury made him uncompetitive against Novak in the SF. Then, the pandemic hits (the lockdowns and everything), which most likely messed up Roger's recovery schedule. Roger came back in 2021 and wasn't the same player. He played his last match at Wimbledon just weeks before his 40th birthday, and was bageled in the final set.
To be honest, I thought Rafa was going to retire in 2021, after he missed Wimbledon and the Olympics due to injury, as well as his subsequent lost to Lloyd Harris at the Citi Open that August. That Rafa looked like a shell of the player that bageled Sinner and was competitive against Djokovic at the French Open just two months earlier. I would have never thought he would come back from that, much less win the next 2 slams.
