Roger Federer isn’t going anywhere
At 41, the Swiss icon retires from professional tennis. But his presence and impact will continue to shape the sport.
Turns out the only feat Roger Federer couldn’t pull off was the perfect ending. On Thursday, Federer announced his retirement from professional tennis, at age 41, his competitiveness still fierce, but his ageing body at the brink.
It isn’t a shock – Federer has been absent from tennis for more than a year, rehabilitating a surgically repaired knee, trying to claw his way back for a climactic goodbye.
He won’t get there, and the finality lands hard.
No more Federer playing the last Sunday on Wimbledon’s Centre Court, that manicured ryegrass effectively his living room for a generation.
No more Federer in Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, in Arthur Ashe in New York City, or sliding on the red dirt at Roland Garros in Paris.
No more Fedheds filling the rafters like tennis pilgrims in their RF hats. No more pretty one-handed backhands, tennis’s most elegant shot. Federer and Serena Williams, exiting in the same month. Tennis won’t be the same.
Federer plans to give it a go at his Laver Cup tournament in London next weekend, his last ATP event. Hopefully Captain Bjorn Borg seizes the moment and pairs Federer in doubles with his friendly rival, Rafael Nadal.
Roger & Rafa, for some gentle dubs, for old times sake. Wouldn’t that be something?
The statistical case for Federer’s greatness is sturdy. Argue among yourselves, but the Swiss icon is on the smallest possible list. Twenty major titles, eight of them at Wimbledon, 103 singles trophies overall, a silver medal for singles in London, a bronze medal for doubles in Beijing. An astonishing 310 weeks as World No. 1, including an outrageous 237 in a row from February 2004 until August 2008.
He got there again in 2018, almost 37, the oldest No. 1 ever. But that’s not what you’ll remember about Federer, is it? It’s not what we’ll tell the grandkids. You’re not going to drown strangers in data about Federer’s 82 per cent lifetime winning percentage or his 10 titles at the Swiss Indoors.
You’re going to talk about how Roger Federer made you feel. Because more than any other player, Federer was an aesthetic experience. He won as much as anyone ever did, but it was really the way he did it, with a game so stylish it verged on artistry. The picture-perfect serves, those dexterous one-handed backhands, the way he’d turn and square the right shoulder to deliver a leaping forehand down the line … it was almost balletic, the way he played the sport.
You’re going to see other players win trophies. But you may never see another person play tennis as beautifully as Federer did.
And even that might not be what you tell the grandkids, because there’s a whole other cluster of Fed fans who admired Federer for his even-keeled grace and respect for the game. He didn’t begin that way – go find the early footage of a temperamental, teen Fed – but the former ball boy from Basel became a statesman, stoic under pressure.
Rivals defined him, too. There was once a time Federer seemed too dominant, almost boring, the way he tore through the sport in the mid-2000s, but by the next decade the battle was fully joined, first with a teenaged Nadal, and then with Novak Djokovic, a brilliant foe from Serbia. Those clashes lifted the sport and sharpened all of them into all-timers, 63 majors among them, Nole and Rafa still going.
Federer lost a lot of those matches. He lost heartbreakingly, on big stages, on the verge of milestones. Many of the defeats are as vivid as the victories: Federer in tears in the Wimbledon twilight in 2008 after dropping a five-set epic to Nadal; Federer stunned after losing match points and a semifinal to Djokovic at the 2010 US Open. Nearly the same exact stunner again, in 2011.
From Wimbledon 2012 to Australia 2017, Federer went through an arid stretch of almost five years between winning majors, during which it was possible to wonder if Djokovic and Nadal had simply become too good. (Let’s not forget Sir Andy Murray, who prevailed over Fed at the Olympics in 2012.) Federer was stubborn about technology – he stuck with a smaller-headed racket longer than he should have, and there were long afternoons and inexplicable crumbles.
But the losses humanised him in a way the championships never could. If you thought Federer was arrogant, or dull as a champion, he was now a different player, mortal, humbled and occasionally pushed around. When he finally got back to the mountaintop – that improbable run to defeat Nadal in the final the 2017 Australian Open, and then a Wimbledon title the same year – it felt like a joyous surprise.
Federer the comeback kid? It happened.
By then his fan base had turned into a sizeable nation. Federer was the most popular men’s player at every tournament he turned up in, the crowd favourite on every court, to the point his opponents had to ruefully accept playing the villain. As Federer moved into his late 30s, his appearances took on a One Last Time vibe, parents bringing children just so they could say the children saw him when.
I did this myself, at the Chicago Laver Cup in 2018, and though my five-year-old son was candidly more interested in the hot pretzels than Federer, I’m happy he’ll be able to tell his kids he saw him live, in the way my father talked about seeing Rocket Rod and the Aussies, and a young Borg.
In conversation, Federer’s less Federer than people might think. By that I mean there’s none of this regal-bearing, otherworldly stuff; he’s funny, irreverent, multilingual, interested in other people and worlds.
He understood the through lines of his sport, how important players like Laver, Roy Emerson and Ken Rosewall were, and how incredible it was that they did it with wooden rackets, gut strings and coach seats. He knew tennis was a larger endeavour than Roger Federer. He felt Serena Williams was as great a player as there’s ever been.
By midcareer, he was a family man, two sets of twins with his wife, Mirka, a former pro and his most devoted courtside advocate. I’m not saying he’s Steve Martin in “Cheaper By the Dozen,” but the image of Federer in a suddenly hectic home – he once injured a knee while drawing a bath for his kiddos – only softened his image further.
Now it’s on to what’s next. Federer has spent two decades laying the foundation for his post-tennis career, in business, philanthropy and as an ambassador for the sport. He’ll be a presence in tennis like Laver is, probably even more so.
Could he use his clout to push for reform, grow tennis by widening development and doing more to help up-and-coming players stay financially afloat as they chase the prosperous Top 20? That’d be great. Tennis can’t rest on nostalgia.
I don’t know if Federer will step into a TV booth like McEnroe, but you’ll see him in commercials until the end of time. You know how Arnold Palmer was everyone’s favourite golfer long after he retired? You know how Michael Jordan, years later, is still Michael Jordan? It’ll be like that. Look at the way he turned up for the Centre Court 100th this summer, in sunglasses and a James Bond suit.
“I consider myself one of the most fortunate people on earth,” he said Thursday. “I was given a special talent to play tennis, and I did it at a level I never imagined, for much longer than I ever thought possible.” He doesn’t get the perfect tennis ending. But Roger Federer got pretty much everything else.
The Wall Street Journal
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