The journey to tennis immortality
Roger Federer’s path to greatness included a memorable stop in Houston.
The 22-yearold Roger Federer who arrived in Houston in the fall of 2003 for the ATP’s season-ending Masters Cup was absolutely certain of only two things. He had enough game to be the reigning Wimbledon champion and he had somebody very, very special in his life.
Mirka, his wife and the mother of his four children today, was his girlfriend then but already his anchor and his muse. When I asked him during an interview at Westside Tennis Club — it was just him and me occupying one of Jim McIngvale’s throwdown living-room sets in the players’ lounge area — about the pressure attendant with seeking to become the No. 1 player in the world, he wasn’t the least bit reticent about saying the ball whacking would take care of itself because, “I have somebody who loves me.”
Federer, who had been good enough at 19 to end Pete Sampras’ 31-match Wimbledon winning streak three summers earlier, wasn’t yet alone on his sport’s Mount Olympus. At that juncture, the Swiss wasn’t yet a tennis savant. In fact, it was still flip-a-coin as to whether Austin resident Andy Roddick, the top-ranked player when that Masters Cup began on the strength of his recent U. S. Open triumph, Federer or Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero, the most recent French Open champion, would follow Sampras as The Man.
As hard it may be to grasp in 2017, Federer once had a reputation for tanking, for not giving a full effort when things weren’t going his way.
“We used to ask ourselves, ‘Why doesn’t Roger beat more people?’” three-time Slam champion Tony Trabert said in an interview that fall in Houston. “You wonder how hard he’s trying. There were questions about his heart and his head. Did he have the courage and the guts to do it?”
By the time Federer flew out of Houston with the tournament trophy safely stored in his luggage, we had our answer — and strong suspicions how the Fed/A-Rod/JC story line would play out. It became no contest. Amazingly, neither Roddick nor Ferrero won another Grand Slam title. Federer? He seeks his 19th starting Monday at Wimbledon, where he’ll be attempting to become the first man to conquer Centre Court eight times.
Only Sampras and William Renshaw, the king of the Challenge Round-era of the 19th-century, have also collected seven. Federer’s 18 Slams won already is a men’s record.
Fittingly, Federer destroyed Ferrero 6-3, 6-1 in group play at Westside, then dispatched Roddick 7-6 (2), 6-2 in the semifinals before routing Agassi 6-3, 6-0, 6-4 for the title. By claiming the Australian Open championship in January 2004, Federer
supplanted Roddick atop the ATP rankings and has never looked back. He has occupied the No. 1 spot for a record 302 weeks, far surpassing Sampras (286) and Ivan Lendl (270).
After winning his fifth Australian Open this January, he skipped the clay-court season to prepare his now 35-year-old body for another go at tennis’ most storied lawn. The English punters have made him a 5-2 favorite on the strength of his 53-minute 6-1, 6-3 demolition of the 20-yearold German Alexander Zverev for his ninth title at the Halle, Germany, tune-up tournament.
Zeverev, the youngest player in
the current top 20, was a first-grader in Hamburg when Federer cut short Agassi’s bid for a final meaningful tennis championship during his own long, rewarding career.
Federer revealed the “secret” for his enduring excellence before the fact when he returned to Houston for a second Masters Cup in 2004. On the eve of his encore triumph at Westside, which culminated in a 6-3, 6-2 thumping of Lleyton Hewitt, who had routed Roddick by the same score in the semifinals, he explained: “This tournament is a new tournament. And next year will be a new year. Every day, I start over. It’s always zero-zero again.”
Right, downright Bill Belichickian. But, as Belichick has with the New England Patriots in a team setting, Federer has always found a way to master the changing dynamics of his sport while defying the aging process (note the new shorter on the sides and back haircut). Now, as he was long ago in Houston, he has been a master of keeping things simple.
Mirka remains his rock, the only entourage he has ever truly needed, although Team Federer now includes two sets of twins.
“Mirka doesn’t want to be away from me, and I don’t want to be away from her,” he said a few years ago. “I’m happy that it’s this way, because anything else would make it more difficult to compete and to play at the highest levels. It would basically be impossible.”
Ain’t love grand?