24 years feel like 24 hours: People’s champion Roger Federer bows out
Often when it comes to writing on sports, and specifically sportspersons, the temptation to weave fiction into fact becomes overwhelmingly irresistible. ‘Great’ and the more woke ‘GOAT’ get bandied about offhandedly, ‘genius’ and ‘poetry in motion’ become commonplace usages. Only the very few truly deserve such hyperbole, and more. A Sachin Tendulkar, for instance. A Tiger...
Often when it comes to writing on sports, and specifically sportspersons, the temptation to weave fiction into fact becomes overwhelmingly irresistible. ‘Great’ and the more woke ‘GOAT’ get bandied about offhandedly, ‘genius’ and ‘poetry in motion’ become commonplace usages.
Only the very few truly deserve such hyperbole, and more. A Sachin Tendulkar, for instance. A Tiger Woods. The late Ayrton Senna. A Mike Tyson, a Michael Jordan, or Magic Johnson, a Pele, or a Maradona. A Serena Williams, or a Steffi Graf. Plus a few more, give or take. Add Roger Federer to that exclusive, elite list.
The Swiss ace’s confirmation on Thursday of calling time on a career most illustrious was neither unexpected nor dramatically sudden, but the finality of the end of a journey of transcendental upliftment was still a jolt to the system.
Unlike Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whose social media post announcing his international retirement in August 2019 was terse and included the strangely worded phrase ‘consider me retired’, Federer bowed out the same way he had striden the tennis courts like a colossus – with articulation, emotion, feeling and graciousness. There was an enormous feel of thanksgiving to his going-away message that was archetypal Federer; it was thoughtful and kind, empathetic and grateful. They don’t really make them like Roger Federer anymore.
— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) September 15, 2022
Even accounting for the fact that cold statistics seldom convey the impact a sportsperson has on his fans’ psyche, Federer’s numbers are beyond impressive. He signs off with 103 titles on the ATP tour and a massive 1,251 singles wins, both second in the Open era behind only Jimmy Connors. His 20 Grand Slam crowns place him third on the all-time list, after Rafael Nadal (22) and Novak Djokovic (21). But Federer has never been about numbers and statistics and titles and match wins.
As a people’s champion, Federer ranks right on top, with only his great opponent and friend Nadal for competition. The Federer-Nadal rivalry, for want of a better word, has elevated tennis to extraordinary levels in the last decade and a half, the older statesman and the equally mature Spaniard able to maintain a healthy and positive relationship despite their titanic on-court tussles.
Tennis aficionados and lay fans can count themselves blessed to have been a part of the most competitive era in the sport, where three men pushed themselves and each other to the limit. There have been phases in tennis history in the past when great rivalries threatened, only to fizzle out rapidly. Indeed, not since Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova in the 1970s and 1980s has the sport witnessed a sustained pow-wow. Graf and Monica Seles was a battle-in-the-making until a deranged fan plunged a knife into the latter, Bjorn Borg quit far too early for his rivalry with John McEnroe to attain epic proportions, and while Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi did slug it out occasionally, with Jim Courier too throwing his hat in the ring, it didn’t have the same impact as the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic faceoffs.
To my tennis family and beyond,
With Love,
Roger pic.twitter.com/1UISwK1NIN— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) September 15, 2022
That Federer conceded more than five years to both his celebrated foes and still held his own for the large part until a slew of injuries undermined his movements in the last couple of years is a tribute to his fitness, his longevity, his competitiveness, his desire and hunger and ambition, and of course to his indisputable skills. Federer, however, is a ripe 41 now, with the legs of a much older man following multiple surgeries to his knees that have restricted his appearance in competitive play in 2021 and 2022 combined to a mere 15 matches.
Until the sands of time and the miles in the legs caught up with him, he produced the most stunning music on the court. It wasn’t that he wasn’t powerful – he could strike the ball as hard as anyone else – but that power was often couched in his sinuous movements, almost balletic as he glided to the ball as if floating through the air. His forehand was beautiful but it was his backhand that had you purring and oohing and aahing in rapturous disbelief. As the entire world gravitated to a double-fisted backhand, Federer remained true to his formative years, unleashing the one-handed missile with such precision and dexterity that you could watch him play that stroke alone for hours on end and not take your eye off the action for even a second.
Federer has admitted several times that in his early years, he was a temperamental, badly-behaved young man. It’s hard to believe that such a beast ever existed because as far as sporting ambassadors go, he is the gold standard. There is a reason why people gravitated to him, and that wasn’t only because he was stacking up the numbers in the ‘W’ column.
He found a way to connect with people without trying to do so, much like Nadal after him, and managed to crack the stiff upper lip of the most self-contained tennis fan, the Brit, with his extraordinary deeds at the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon where he won a staggering eight crowns.
It’s a bit of a shame that in his final slice of individual action on the ATP Tour, he lost the final set of a most remarkable career 6-0 to Hungarian Hubert Hurkacz, who only took to tennis because of Federer, at Wimbledon 2021. In the year and a quarter since, Federer hasn’t taken to the courts, though in his farewell post on Thursday, the Swiss master said the Laver Cup starting next week would be his swansong. What an event that will be as Europe take on the best of the rest, a Europe that will include Nadal and Djokovic in a tournament named after one of the greatest of all-time, Australian Rod Laver.
Federer will leave tennis richer for his towering presence, for his graciousness and magnanimity, for his innate decency and an inherent respect for the history of the sport.
He may not have always fought the good fight off the court, but he has given back to tennis almost as much as the sport has given him. And he is still only 41, with a lifetime of tennis ahead of him, even if only off the court. “Love you, will never leave you,” he told his legion of fans as he prepared to bring the curtain down on 24 years of professional tennis.
Thanks for the memories, Maestro, we all say in unison!
