Cincy Crisis Center, Day 5

Mornin', everyone. Well, these are grim times in Fedlandia, and I'll be posting some thoughts along these same lines a little later over at ESPN (where I delve into the strange affliction called Seven Day Tournament Influenza, or SDTI).

This loss yesterday at Cincinnati confirmed two things in my mind: First, the Federer is definitely struggling (and frankly, I resisted that word until very recently; it's not like he was an early round casualty at Roland Garros or Wimbledon, and he didn't exactly play a dogpoop final in London, right?).

Second, and just as critically for The Mighty Fed, all the ATP sharks circling in the water have undeniably picked up the scent. Everyone he meets in the next few weeks - indeed - the forseeable future, will bring his A-Game. It will be payback time for all those 6-2,6-1 beatdowns that left otherwise fine players babbling semi-coherently about the perhaps the greatest player ever to swing a stick. What else could they say?

As I see it, the best-case scenario for Federer fans is that Roger is simply suffering from a common ailment closely associated with what we think of as "the blues", which has at various times gripped headliners from A (Agassi) to B (Borg) and all the way to S (Sampras). It  simply a case of having trouble mustering the drive and focus and passion it takes to return to a place like Monte Carlo, Miami, Cincinnati or Stockholm for the sixth or eight or ninth time (often after having won it multiple times) feeling or even successfully pretending you still care - that the fire in the belly still burns. This is a tall order, and only a player armed with grand ambitions (or venal ones) can see how all those tournaments that run together are all pieces that must be fit together to assemble the puzzle of greatness, or maybe not even that - maybe it's just the puzzle of an all-consuming professionalism.

The reality here is that Federer may be mentally and emotionally treading water, absorbing the vengeful blows of lesser players while planning his next big move, or at least planning to plan it, in Beijing or New York as if he's thinking: Ha - Olympics, New York, Grand Slams, gold medals. These guys think I'm weakened now, it's a pity. I'll show them who  I still am!

There are three dangerous things about that condition, or approach. First, it's an enormous waste of stored competitive capital, even if it's intended for an ultimately good cause . Most players only dream about getting to Masters semifinals, upending top seeds, or pickinng up six-figure checks,  and they draw enormous hope and motivation out of the missteps of the dominant players. You make the competition better, or at least more justifiably hopeful and focused, when smaller events cease to matter.

Second, a "slump" is a relative thing; Federer's slump is Dancevic or Acasuso's brilliant run. But Virginia Wade said something very interesting at a small luncheon I attended yesterday (it was sponsored by the USTA, as part of it's  celebration of 40 years of Open tennis -  a festival that will take place at the US Open). She pointed out that When you do have a slump, you have to play your way out of it, and sometimes that means absorbing losses even when you've started playing your A game again, and feel emotionally a mentally refreshed. That is, the confidence of a guy on an 11-match winning streak can't be created externally - by the prestige or significance of an event.

Third, and most obvious, is that failing to perform at peak level at sub-Grand Slam events hurts your chances of accumulating a resume that does your talent maximum justice. The tour is, in a way, a terrible leveler, swiftly punishing you for the failure to perform week-in, week-out, with no questions asked.

Let's keep this slump in context; Federer has lost a measly three  singles matches (okay, a whopper and measly two battles). It's not the end of the world, or the collapse of Federlandia. In a way, Federer is lucky that he has two events of critical importance coming up quickly in the rear-view mirror, because the longer the slump, the more difficult it is to come out of it.

This is your Crisis Center thread for today; please keep the comments on-topic until the chatter about the matches and actual match calling have died down.