WIMBLEDON, England—Andy Murray will play world No. 2 Roger Federer in the Wimbledon semifinals on Friday, their first match at the grass-court Slam since the 2012 final, which Federer won in four sets. That was the last time the 17-time Grand Slam champion won a major. They also played at the All England Club a few weeks later, in the Olympic gold medal match, which Murray won in straight sets.
“I have no idea how long he can keep competing at the top level. No one knows,” Murray said about the 33-year-old Federer. “It could be three, four years at the rate he's going just now. But that depends on a lot of things. If he wants to continue doing that or not. But the reasons why he's still at the top is he has a pretty efficient game style. He's quite loose on the court.”
Federer has a career record of 1,030-233 and 86 titles.
“It's very impressive that he's managed to stay at the top of the game for so long considering how long he's been at the top of the game for and how many matches he's played,” Murray said. “It's significantly more than a lot of the guys that have been at the top of the game for a long time.
Last year, Murray and Federer played each other in the round-robin stage of the ATP World Tour Finals, with the Swiss crushing Murray, 6-0, 6-1. The two have not played against each other this year; Federer leads their head-to-head 12-11.
“I was actually quite calm after that match...” Murray said. “A lot of people in my team, people around me, were very, very worried by that match ... It was obviously embarrassing, the scoreline ... Came back and played some extremely good tennis at the beginning of the year in Australia. So it was a tough loss, for sure. But I tried to deal with it in the right way.”