Roger Federer Responds to Benneteau Remarks

Roger Federer was accused of getting preferential treatment at the Australian Open and many other tournaments, by the French player Julien Benneteau, earlier this week. Since then the comment has caught fire, and has spread so far that the tournament director of Australian Open has had to come out and give his statement.

In terms of players and their appeal, it needs to be said that Roger Federer is a once-in-a-generation player widely regarded as one of the biggest ‘box office’ athletes in the world,” Craig Tiley told an Australian newspaper earlier on Wednesday. “The fans demand his appearance in the big stadiums and our broadcasters naturally want his matches to air in prime time”, he added.

Novak Djokovic also voiced his opinion saying that, if Roger Federer does not deserve the treatment he gets, then nobody does. “At the end of the day, in a way he deserves the special treatment because he’s six-time Australian Open champion and arguably the best player ever”, said Novak Djokovic.

“If he doesn’t have it, who is going to have it?” he continued.“People want to see him play on the center court, and they want to see him play in the best hours, which is 7:30 at night in the Rod Laver Arena.”

Finally the issue reached Roger Federer himself, who said that he was not going to comment on it much and unnecessarily prolong a trivial matter. “I don’t feel like I need to comment on this. I’d rather put it to rest rather than adding to it so you guys got something to write about,” said Federer.

“I get asked, would you like to play Monday or Tuesday sometimes. Sometimes I get asked, ‘do you want to play day or night?’ Sometimes they go ask the agent. Sometimes they ask me, you know, ‘Asia wants you to play at night,'” Federer revealed in his press conference.

Federer pointed out that many players have requests and sometimes the tournametn obliges and sometimes they don’t, which has been the case with Federer as well.”Yes, sometimes we have our say. But I asked to play Monday at the US Open. I played Tuesday night. It’s all good. Sometimes I get help, sometimes I don’t”, said Federer. “But a lot of the facts are not right, just to be clear there, from what I heard”, he added.

Roger Federer kept his hopes alive at the ATP World Tour Finals, by beating the Austrian Dominic Thiem in straight sets. He will now face the South-African Kevin Anderson, who is looking to be the man to beat in Federer’s group.