Federer Blames Slump on Mono

Don’t worry about Roger Federer’s lackluster season so far: he's been sick. Federer spent the early months of the season plagued by undiagnosed mononucleosis, he told the Independent. “If the doctors had found out, they would have told me not to play,” Federer says. But “by the time they’d done one more test it was over already.”

The tennis great is impressed with his own sickness-hampered performance. “I was able to get up and play a five-setter against Tipsarevic at a time when apparently my mononucleosis was at its strongest,” he marvels. But Federer has gotten a new coach, so some adjustments must be in order. “You look for little things,” he says. “Little things that can make a big difference.” (More Roger Federer stories.)