Roger Federer has Andy Murray in his sights at Australian Open

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/20/roger-federer-australian-open-andy-murray

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As Swiss Family Federer – an entourage comprising a husband and wife, a nanny and two sets of twins – continues its globe-trotting journey through tennis, the captain of the ship gives every indication of sailing on indefinitely.

Roger Federer is poised to take over as world No1 if Novak Djokovic slips up this season – he trails the Serb by 1,530 points and plays Simone Bolelli, whose fluid style has often been compared to his own, in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday. If Federer beats the Italian he will post career win 1,002, a mountainous collection of victories that includes 17 slam titles.

“We’re not going to talk about this every single match now, right?” he quipped when asked about passing the landmark in Brisbane recently, then adding to it in the first round in Melbourne by beating the Taiwanese Lu Yen-hsun in straight sets on Monday.

Beyond Bolelli lies more exacting challenges before a probable quarter-final against Andy Murray, whom he beat at that stage here a year ago and who has to negotiate a tricky second-round match against the unpredictable Australian, Marinko Matosevic.

At 33, Federer is not only playing his best tennis in years, he is relaxed, content and despite a worrying flare-up of a back injury that forced him to pull out of the ATP World Tour Finals title-decider against Djokovic in London in November, in rude health.

For the first time he spoke in detail this week about how the back injury nearly forced him to miss Switzerland’s Davis Cup final against France a week later in Lille. “I had the doctor take a train from Lille Saturday night after the [Tour Finals] semi-final against Stan Wawrinka,” Federer said. “I hardly could get out of bed. He had a look at me [and said] if you can’t even run, you can’t play.

“What we did was just let it heal. He [said] just do basically nothing except some very minor treatment, so it relaxes. It took two-and-a-half days, three days until I could run again. I was taking medication, heavy ones. Just got back in time. Basically, Wednesday night when I went for a hit in Lille, that was the first time I felt like I could run. That’s when I decided: if you can run, you can play.”

He ran, he played, he lost [to Gaël Monfils] then won – and Switzerland lifted the Davis Cup after 84 attempts. It was an emotional night, one Federer could share with his friends and team-mates rather than alone.

It could be his career mantra: if you can run, you can play. There is no indication that Federer’s legs are ready to give up on him. Whether or not they can carry him through two weeks of a gruelling grand slam tournament again, we will discover soon enough, and if Federer wins the Australian Open, he will be the oldest to do so since Ken Rosewall won in 1972 at the age of 37 years and 62 days.