That I've played tennis for 19 years isn't the reason I'm right, but it means that I have a little bit of insight into what accomplished tennis players can do. Which is way more than some people who have absolutely no clue, and make up ridiculously silly reasons as to why the whole thing is fake or impossible - not just staged.
This is a fun video I think for tennis fans and non-tennis fans alike. It looks amazingly perhaps unbelievably impressive to people who don't know tennis. But it is NOT an extremely high demonstration of accuracy. Any expert player could do this, including every pro on the ATP and minor circuits, every single female pro too, and every single division I collegiate player, easily. Now for Federer he is one of the best players of all time, he or Samprass or the other top servers on tour, could have done this at twice or three times the distance!
He does put his hand in his pocket after the first serve, but that doesn't mean he is trying to hide a tennis ball in his pocket! If they wanted to fake it to that extent, why on earth would they have Roger stuff the ball into his pocket - on camera? Silly. My guess is that he reached into his pocket out of habit, or to resettle his pants after serving the ball. For those of you who don't know tennis, reaching into your pocket after you serve is a fairly common thing to do - because you are getting a ball for your second serve. To say he is stuffing a tennis ball in his pocket to conceal it, because he actually didn't serve it is silly.
The reason I said thousands of players could do this, is because it is not even challenging. Wasn't challenging for Federer and wouldn't be challenging for pretty much any pro, collegiate player, or even a competitive regionally ranked highschool player! Even if it would make them nervous if they din't practice the shot ahead of time. It's a matter of the distances and angles. Lets just assume that the distance here is 20 fit. And lets assume that the bottle is 3" diameter. The diameter of a tennis ball is 2.7". This means that he could actually be 2.85" off from dead center in either direction and still hit the bottle. The actual area that the ball has to go into is close to six inches wide. Of course he hit it pretty much dead center, he's a top player, arguably the best player in history. The distance from the baseline to the end of the service box is 60ft - three times greater. So this is equivalent to hitting a 18" wide target in the service box, with your second serve.
There is a reason they did it twice in a row - to show that it wasn't a fluke, or one lucky hit out of many. Federer (or any top pro) could probably do this many times in a row (I'd guess 10 to 20 times) before missing. And by miss I mean miss a little to the side, or miss high, or at worst skim the top of the guys head - not jack the guy square in the face.
It is not a big insurance risk because there is virtually zero risk of injury here. Even in the unlikely event that Federer were to hugely miss and hit the guy square in the face, even in the eye socket, it MIGHT leave a bruise but nothing more. For those of you who know nothing of tennis, it is an inflated hollow rubber ball covered in felt. Tennis players do get hit with shots faster than this, and it is just assumed that they play on. In competition, particularly doubles, it is considered perfectly sportsman to smash the ball directly at the opponent if that happens to be the best shot available and other shots are potentially cut off. The reason this is accepted is because it is known that the risk of serious injury is extremely low or non-existent.
As far as the suit, it is obviously not restricting him from doing a service motion, so its not an issue at all. If you can serve 130-140mph wearing a t-shirt, then yes you can probably serve 80mph wearing a suit. Pro's used to wear pants on the court. As for the speed, 80mph, 117 feet per second, 5 feet per frame at 24 frames, sounds about right. It could have been 70mph, could have been 90. Looks and sounds like about 80 to me. Which is within the range of Federer's second serve, which is something he practices thousands of times a year.
As far as faking it completely, I supposed that means they faked the sound, faked the reactions of the other people, faked federer bouncing the ball, asked Federer to do something fake, faked everything. It would be a whole heck of a lot easier just to have him hit the bottle off the guys head a couple times and be done with it. Which is exactly what they did.
It was staged, it was setup, but it is a completely real display of the accuracy that thousands of accomplished tennis players possess.
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