Tennis: Federer will know his future on his 40th birthday – the night of the Olympics closing ceremony

Roger Federer makes his comeback from a 14-month absence and two knee operations this week. He wants to peak at Wimbledon and the Olympics – which close on his 40th birthday.

Swiss veteran Roger Federer is heading to the Tokyo Olympics

The Tokyo Olympics’ closing ceremony will be held on the night of Roger Federer’s 40th birthday. He’s unlikely to be there for fear of catching COVID-19 or having to endure the infernal torment of watching his Serbian self, Novak Djokovic, ripping off his shirt and celebrating a gold medal while telling everyone, probably in fluent Japanese, how much he loves them.

Yet August 8 looms as a date of enormous personal and professional significance for Federer. Both the Games and his 30s will be over, snuffed out like the Olympic flame. Incredible symmetry. In Basel or Doha or the Swiss alps or whichever of his glittering bases he chooses, he will blow out his candles and get stuck into some of Mirka’s cake and start properly pondering his retirement.

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He will have a pretty fair idea by then if his comeback from two knee operations is pie-in-the-sky stuff or whether one of the most storied and celebrated careers in world sport can continue through to next year’s Australian Open.

“The fall of this year,” is when Federer expects to choose between quitting or soldiering on. His departure from athletic endeavour will be up there with Muhammad Ali’s last fight and Don Bradman’s final innings and Michael Jordan’s last quarter for significance and poignancy. We know it’s coming soon but to quote his career prizemoney, the $168 million question is … how soon?

He hasn’t played a match for 14 months while recovering from two operations on his dicky old knees. He will drop out of the world’s top five on Tuesday before facing either Dan Evans or Jeremy Chardy in this week’s return to tournament tennis at the Qatar Open. Evans may very well beat him.

Federer has his eyes on two main prizes/litmus tests. Then the decision-making progress will begin. Wimbledon will be staged from June 28 to July 11 if the pandemic is sufficiently handcuffed in London. The biggest event of all is the one he believes he can still win. Then it will be on to the Olympics from July 23 to his birth date of August 8.

He’s never won a singles gold medal. When the curtains are drawn on Tokyo and his 40s are ushered in, quite the coincidence, fall in the northern hemisphere will be approaching and he will pretty much know if he’s wasting time or beating it.

The US Open is from August 30 to September 12, by which time he will have decided for certain if he’s going to be at Melbourne Park in January. But it’s definitely Wimbledon and the Olympics where he wants to peak, and where he will know for sure if he’s still up to it. When the Games wrap up on August 8, he can keep telling himself age is just a number – but it will have become a bloody big number.

“I know it‘s on the rare side for almost a 40-year-old to come back after a year being out,” he said. “What’s important is I’m injury and pain-free. The pain is completely under control. I know I need to go back to training after here again, so from this standpoint it’s just about building up to being stronger, better, fitter, faster and all that stuff. I hope then by Wimbledon I’m going to be 100 per cent, and that’s when the season starts for me.”

Federer hasn’t played a match since losing to Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals of the 2020 Australian Open. He’s never won an Olympic singles gold medal. He has said he doesn’t need a fairytale ending, which is what you say when you’re not really expecting one.

“I want to go out on my terms, but for my life, I wanted to do this rehab anyhow,” he says. “I want to go skiing with my children and my friends, and go and play basketball and football. Retirement was never really on the cards (last year). I think it‘s really a conversation more, let’s say, if the knee keeps bothering me for months and months to come – then let’s look at it. This is not the time to think about. “Let’s say in the fall of this year.”

Federer’s Spanish stalker, Rafael Nadal, has equalled Federer’s record of 20 major titles while the self has moved up to 18. Federer has changed his tune on their race to top the all-time list. He’s previously said the record means a lot to him. At Doha there’s been more a an attitude of been there, done that.

“I just feel like the story‘s not over yet,” Federer says. “I enjoy playing tennis, I enjoy being on the road. Probably one of the other reasons to come back is that I would like to get that high again of playing against the best players,” Federer says.

“Playing at the biggest tournaments, winning them hopefully, and being in the conversation. My concern is more my own game, my own health, over the record. I think for them maybe this is bigger than for me, at this very moment, because for me it was very important to equal the record of Pete (Sampras), and potentially break it. For them, maybe I’m the measuring stick – like Pete was for me.”