{"id":17314,"date":"2013-01-12T11:56:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T09:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/federer-fresh-off-the-practice-courts\/"},"modified":"2013-01-12T11:56:19","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T09:56:19","slug":"federer-fresh-off-the-practice-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/federer-fresh-off-the-practice-courts\/","title":{"rendered":"Federer fresh off the practice courts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MELBOURNE \u2013 With a trophy cabinet straining at the hinges and a 53rd consecutive grand slam appearance looming, Roger Federer might be excused for feeling a little jaded ahead of his bid for a fifth Australian Open crown, <a href=\"http:\/\/mobile.reuters.com\/article\/idUSBRE90B04I20130112?irpc=932\" target=\"_blank\">reports Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Not a bit of it, the 31-year-old Swiss maestro said on Saturday, having passed his motivation test during punishing practice sessions in the off-season.<\/p>\n<p>Federer eschewed all warm-up tournaments for the year\u2019s first grand slam, dropping off the radar altogether in favor of a hermit-like training regime and time with his family.<\/p>\n<p>The break, coming off a disappointing US Open and loss of his ATP Tour Finals crown to Novak Djokovic, was seized upon as evidence his competitive fires were beginning to flicker out.<\/p>\n<p>Federer admitted to some trepidation before returning to the practice courts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s always a bit of a test for me going into the practice season,\u201d the 17-times grand slam champion told reporters at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAm I hungry and motivated to wake up, go on the practice courts for hours?\u201d he told reporters at Melbourne Park, before affirming it was all systems go.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was not one problem. For me, that was good news. I was eager to improve my game, change it up a bit from all the tournaments I played this last few years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo go on the practice court and try to improve my game there. I also go into the gym and get stronger again. I enjoyed it. As long as that\u2019s the case, that means I love (the game) very much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mobile.reuters.com\/article\/idUSBRE90B04I20130112?irpc=932\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MELBOURNE \u2013 With a trophy cabinet straining at the hinges and a 53rd consecutive grand slam appearance looming, Roger Federer might be excused for feeling a little jaded ahead of his bid for a fifth Australian Open crown, reports Reuters. Not a bit of it, the 31-year-old Swiss maestro said on Saturday, having passed his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3258,830,885],"class_list":{"0":"post-17314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mysport","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}