Grading Roger Federer’s 2016 Season and Looking Ahead to 2017

It was not easy for Roger Federer to sit with a knee injury during the second half of 2016 after years of graceful excellence and longevity. The Swiss Maestro was hampered by the February surgery, and intermittent play ultimately cost him chances to compete at the French and U.S. Opens.

While Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka seized opportunities to surpass a fading Novak Djokovic, Federer might be wondering about his cruel fate as bystander, as if he could have been the one to win the U.S. Open or recapture the No. 1 ranking.

There were a few promising highlights in 2016, but it became an expanded remix of Federer’s nightmarish 2013. Engine failure left the Fed Express stranded on the tracks in the fifth set of the Wimbledon semifinals. There, his season effectively ended when he crumpled on the Centre Court lawns that had once staged seven memorable championships.

There were more “what-ifs” than triumphs in 2016, and the Swiss’ aging and injuries are becoming the swan song. Will he compete one more time at something close to his fabled past?

Federer’s 2016 tennis season is the first of our weekly offseason superstar profiles that count down six contenders in men’s tennis.

Grade: C- or Incomplete

Federer entered 2016 as the No. 3 player in the world and the most competitive threat to Djokovic. Now he finds himself at No. 16, sandwiched between young Lucas Pouille and underachieving Grigor Dimitrov. The best laid plans of new coach Ivan Ljubicic and Federer went askew.

The blueprint originally called for Federer to skip much of the clay-court season so that he could peak at Wimbledon, the Olympics and the U.S. Open. Instead, Federer’s season went Down Under with a knee injury at the conclusion of his semifinal run to the Australian Open.

There would be more time off as he delayed a comeback to Indian Wells, got ill before Miami and simply needed to get some match play at Monte Carlo. He got only three matches there and two at Rome a month later before missing the French Open, his first major miss since 1999—when Pete Sampras was No. 1 and half a decade before the Federer Revolution that would …

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