“I understand it, but I don’t like it,” Patrick McEnroe, an ESPN analyst and former U.S. Davis Cup captain, said of Federer’s withdrawal in a telephone interview. “It devalues the major, and it gives someone in the draw a walkover. It gives arguably an advantage to somebody else. They play one less match.”
He added: “It’s just not a great look to pull out of a tournament in the middle. It’s one thing if you sprain an ankle badly and finish a match on adrenaline. Those things happen. But it’s another thing when you kind of go into a tournament knowing that you probably aren’t going to be able to really finish the tournament. Roger can’t expect that he’s going to play the French Open and not have some physically demanding matches in the first three or four rounds. That’s kind of inevitable. Look, he’s trying to get himself ready to make a run at Wimbledon, which I believe he’s done. And a lot of people say he’s Roger Federer. He can do whatever he wants. He’s earned this right, and I understand that, but I still don’t like it.”
www.nytimes.com
