Federer says the tennis show needs to speed up

Federer says the tennis show needs to speed up Efficient Roger Federer has revealed he's no fan of what appears to be the increasingly longer pre-match warm-up which he thinks is dragging out and slowing down the ATP game.

The world No. 3 admitted at the US Open: "I still think we can push the boundaries. If you look at how much time we can take walking onto the match, onto the court until the first ball is hit, I mean, there are many times where it takes way too long between points."

The concept of a short-sharp warm-up has been broached by the British press, so far with limited success. Players including Rafael Nadal and others routinely take their time in getting ready to play, hitting practise serves after time is called and certainly not rushing anything to try and fit into a timetable.

Federer, by contrast, says that he's behind any effort to speed up the show. "I've felt like over the last six months they've been trying to speed up the warm-ups," said the 16-time Grand Slam champion. "But instead of saying, 'two minutes' they say 'three minutes' and stuff when you're at net.

"It's a bit of a waste of time, to be quite honest, this whole pre-warm-up. I think officials should and could be more strict. Sometimes I wonder if they're more strict on the outside courts than on the big courts, even though on the big courts you kind of give some leeway to players.

"They're not doing it out of not being fair, but just that's how they do it (take extra time)."