Olympic gold lures Federer to Tokyo Games

PARIS: Roger Federer announced Monday he will compete at next year’s Tokyo Olympics in a bid to claim the men’s singles gold medal, the only major prize he has yet to win.

“I’ve been debating with my team for a few weeks now, months actually, what I should do in the summer time (of 2020) after Wimbledon and before the US Open,” he said at a promotional event.

“At the end of the day my heart decided to play the Olympic Games again.” Federer has won all four of the Grand Slam tournaments, as well as the ATP Tour Finals six times, but is still waiting to grab Olympic singles gold.

The 20-time Grand Slam champion did win a doubles gold alongside fellow Swiss Stan Wawrinka at Beijing in 2008, but when he got to the London singles final in 2012 he was hammered 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 by an inspired Andy Murray.

Federer did not compete at Rio 2016, where Murray won again, but has since twice won the Australian Open and took the 2017 Wimbledon title before losing an epic final in the grass-court Grand Slam to Novak Djokovic earlier this year.

Serbia’s Djokovic, and Federer’s eternal rival Rafael Nadal, have both already said they will compete at Tokyo, the trio setting the scene for a highly competitive tournament. Nobody will be writing the ageing triumvirate off.

The 32-year-old Djokovic is world number one and the player poised to take top spot off him in the coming weeks is Nadal, 33. The 38-year-old Federer is third in the world rankings, while Nadal and Djokovic won all four Grand Slams between them this year. The two-time defending Olympic champion and three-time Grand Slam winner Murray, coming back from his January hip surgery, is yet to announce his intentions for Tokyo.