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DOHA: Roger Federer, the holder of a record 16 Grand Slam titles, believes that his new coach Paul Annacone is giving him new ideas which can make him even more dangerous during 2011.
Federer won 29 of his last 33 matches with Annacone's help during the latter part of last year, convincing him that he can extend his famous record during a season which begins for him Tuesday in the Qatar Open.
Part of the optimism is because Annacone, who helped Pete Sampras to nine of his 14 Grand Slam titles, offers insights into how Federer can add to his armoury during his 30th year.
“Paul came from the outside and maybe has always seen things in my game he could never really tell me about before because we haven't been working together,” said Federer.
“Some people always feel like the impact needs to happen immediately, which maybe it kind of did, I don't know, but also the surface change to hard courts (during the last phase of the 2010 season) definitely helped.
“I think there's good harmony in the team, which was obviously key for me to be able to play well. I'm a very easy going guy.
“I think Paul integrated extremely well into the team, and makes it fun to come up with new ways trying to beat an opponent, and maybe showed me also some ways that I didn't know about how you could beat the opponent, or show me some weaknesses of opponents that maybe are not so visible but that he's seen. Those I'm able to exploit now a bit more maybe.”
Federer would never allow secrets to escape to his rivals by identifying what those new ways might be, but some of them may involve applying pressure more frequently with more assertive service returns.
They may also include ways of preventing great rival Rafael Nadal from using his exceptional lateral movement, and preventing the world number one from Spain from building pressure in longer rallies.
The two rivals should meet in Saturday's final, although both may face tough semi-finals.
Federer could have the dangerously hard-hitting Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the third-seeded Frenchman, and Nadal may face Nikolay Davydenko, the Russian who saved match points to beat him in last year's extraordinary final.
Federer begins against a qualifier and may go on to meet Viktor Troicki, a member of Serbia's Davis Cup winning team, in the quarter-finals.
Nadal faces Karol Beck, a former top 40 player from Slovakia, and may meet the unpredictably talented Ernests Gulbis, the 22-year-old Latvian, in the last eight.
It is the 66th tournament in which the Spanish and the Swiss legends have been seeded in the top two, and one of the them has taken the title on 44 of those occasions.
But if Federer doesn't win, he may not mind too much because, he says, he enjoys the tour so much these days.
“Success is only one part or a small part of how I approach the next season,” he claimed.
That's because he “pretty much always work in the long term, and that's why when the new season starts everything sort of gets put back to zero, the points and those sorts of things.”
Nor does he have regrets that the off-season remains, for the time being, still rather short on the men's tour.
“I think it might even have been a good thing, because I've been playing really well at the end (of the 2010 season),”he said.
“I hope I can carry it over. There is still no surface change,” he concluded, referring to Doha's hard courts.
“So I hope I can kind of bring my momentum over to 2011 and I can expect myself to play good tennis again.”
