Pushing 39, taking a year off - is the end of Roger Federer's career nigh?

By employing instinct and reacting faster than his opponents, Federer, over the last two decades, seized control of what matters most in tennis: time

And so it begins. The prattle about how all good — in this case, great — things must come to an end; the talk of slow decay and the colossal void that will be left behind; the dawning of the realisation that even he, the great Roger Federer, a specimen belonging to some empyrean space only he has ever roamed, may finally have to confront his own sporting mortality. 

There comes a time in every elite athlete’s life when the body starts to feel like a bit of a wreck, unable to obey the mind and meet the standards it