Swiss legend Roger Federer opened up about the similarities he sees between World No.1 Carlos Alcaraz and himself at a press conference ahead of the 2026 season of the Australian Open.
The 20-time Grand
Slam champion Federer believed that he sees a bit of himself in Spaniard Alcaraz in terms of the nature of their approach towards the game.
“Carlos, when I see him, I feel like there’s more similarities in terms of what we would do, in terms of when we would hit a drop shot, when we would come to the net, how offensive, how passive do we decide to play, because I think we like to play on our terms,” the Swiss icon said.
“So I put myself more into Carlos’s mindset and skin,” he added.
Federer also touched up on the blossoming rivalry between Alcaraz and World No.2 Jannik Sinner, who seem to be poised to battle it out at the very top of modern tennis echelons going forward.
“The rivalry that Carlos and Jannik are building is incredible. They play unbelievable,” the 44-year-old said.
“The 2025 Roland Garros final was one of the best matches of all time. The world stopped to watch Paris, and it’s great that our sport can create moments like that,” he added.
Federer reflected on Sinner’s Wimbledon fixture against Grigor Dimitrov, who also plays the single-handed backhand like the Swiss icon embodied, and saw it as a blueprint for how he would have approached the Italian.
“At Wimbledon, when Grigor was playing against Jannik and I was sitting there, that made it easy to think how it could’ve been because Grigor plays very similar to how I played.”
“I think it was one of the first times I thought how would it have been to play Jannik. I didn’t feel that way watching Jannik against Novak Djokovic at the Shanghai Masters,”
“I was just watching great tennis because they both played very different to how I play.”
“Now with Sinner at one time I thought “Okay, now I understand how I would probably play against Jannik,” he revealed.
