Thank you, Roger Federer

Federer, while announcing his retirement, said: “The past three years have presented me with challenges in the form of injuries and surgeries. I’ve worked hard to return to full competitive form. But I also know my body’s capacities and limits, and its message to me lately has been clear."

Among the many preoccupations of our modern lives, Roger Federer’s long career has been one of the wonders we have obsessed over. Federer has been beyond the fables, but his greatness can also be assessed in solid stats.

Federer has 20 grand slam titles and has played more than 1500 matches in the last 24 years, not to mention his 310 weeks (of which 237 were consecutive weeks) as the world’s number one player. From 2003 until his defeat to Rafael Nadal in the 2008 final, Federer was undefeated at Wimbledon, and has amassed more Wimbledon wins than any other modern player. There are many more statistics, but the simple truth of the numbers is: Federer has for the large part of his sporting career won more than anyone ever has, in great style and for an extraordinarily long time. By the 2016 Australian Open, he had appeared in a record 47 grand slam tournaments and with the 2017 win at Australian Open, he became the second oldest tennis player to have won a grand slam title. Federer continued playing past his contemporaries and went beyond the injuries and speculations on his retirement since 2017.

That he would retire someday was inevitable and widely anticipated. Yet, tennis fans all over the world are dismayed, overwhelmed with a sense of loss, frenzied with anxiety over the announcement. The credits and drum rolls have begun rolling from all quarters – friends, peers and juniors alike – but here is the thing: the fact that we will never see Federer playing grand slams beyond The Laver Cup hurts.

More than two decades ago, in Basel, Switzerland’s second-largest city where Federer grew up, the beginnings for this sporting great were ordinary. Very unlike the rags to riches story that we love for entrepreneurs, Federer’s story has been one of a laboured journey to grand slams and greatness, with its fair share of on-court meltdowns and drama. He did come from a relatively affluent middle-class family, unlike several genius players who have risen from the ghettos and blue-collar neighbourhoods, but with an equally enormous drive and love for sports.

Being in Switzerland, where tennis was yet to become a rage, didn’t help either. There were no life-size posters of Federer at his school to celebrate super-achieving alumni, nor any television shows proclaiming his greatness. There were no adulatory messages, or crazy bunch of cheer leaders or fans waiting in queues for him. Being Federer was normal and human in his country. That also meant he was enormously self-motivated and determined to excel, without external triggers, personal misery, or battle cries. As Chris Bowers put it in his book, Roger Federer: The Greatest, "Perhaps the lesson for tennis sociologists from the Roger Federer story is that such determination is classless – that it can burn as brightly in someone for whom everything was laid on, as it can in someone who has had to fight for everything."

The ferocity of his young years came with its challenges. His junior matches were soaked in tears and frustration, often expressed in volatile temper on court. "I was throwing around my racket like you can’t imagine," he once said in an interview quoted by the website tennis-x.com. The realisation of how far this could continue came in 2000 at the Sydney Olympics when a losing Federer smashed his racket in a rage. Bower in his book says the incident made Federer rethink his attitude towards losing. In future tournaments, Federer was never found perturbed or raging – be it victory or defeat, even if this took a mix of sports and psychological coaching.

Being a junior champion isn’t a guarantee for success. Not many have proceeded to become sporting greats. Since the first world junior championships were held in 1978, a number have gone on to top the rankings while others have faltered. For Federer, the next 20 years after his junior championship unfolded excellence but the transition was slow and laboured. It took five odd years to go from junior circuit to winning his first grand slam in 2003 at the age of 21. Even after that, he had some embarrassing losses, such as the match in 2000 with waning champion Michael Chang. The uneven course of his journey often begs the question: is Federer’s sporting excellence inherited or acquired? As his life would show, it’s both.

Federer learnt and honed his skills, worked on his temper, and played the game like art, whether he was winning or losing. Federer entered the world of tennis with his very own style. He combined the varied wooden rackets era of the 1960s with the dizzying pace of modern tennis. Describing his technique, Christopher Jackson wrote in ‘Roger Federer: Portrait of An Artist’: "The forehand is whipped and ingenious, and attractive to touch. But there is nothing sedate about it: it is instead a thing of sound and fury." Armed with a variety of strokes that had no room for monotony, Federer offered a "nimble game with a mountaineer’s calm", he wrote.

Federer’s journey isn’t just one of invincibility; it is of persistence and growth more than overnight successes and unprecedented glory. At the same time, his game is almost like that of a trapeze artist holding on to unstable ropes, where only skill and dexterity lead to success. Federer’s story makes us believe that the beginnings can be beset with failures but there are still possibilities in those failures. It also makes us believe in art and its timeless appeal that can outlast sporting legends, but the time in which they exist can be fleeting whose loss is only a thing to mourn over. It offers the gifts and the sorrows of what human excellence brings.

Perhaps Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker article ‘Anxiety on the grass’ described it best: "Some people are so enthralled by the way Roger Federer plays tennis that they can hardly bear to see him lose". Now, they cannot bear to see him retire.