FEDERER A TENNIS ARTIST LIKE NO OTHER PLAYER
His retirement will leave a major void in the sport that will take some time to overcome
Roger Federer's twilight could not last forever. But, he certainly gave it a run.
Federer, the 41-year-old
Swiss maestro, on Thursday announced his plans to retire from the sport he once dominated like no other.
Coming on the heels of Serena Williams' own retirement — and a week after Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish teenager, won the U.S. Open to signal what felt like a new era of tennis — Federer's announcement confirmed it. Federer, and his 20 Grand Slam titles, is the first of the Big Three to put away his racket. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, five and six years his junior, may have a few seasons in them yet. But Federer's departure is significant all on its own because at his height, he was omnipresent. He once appeared in 10 consecutive Grand Slam finals and in a mind-bending 23 straight Slam semis.
Even if you have only a passing familiarity with professional tennis, you would know that every player has strengths and weaknesses on certain surfaces: hard court, grass, clay. Federer wasn't particularly good on clay — he won the French Open just once — but he was such a flawless player in his prime that he could still get to at least the final four at Roland Garros year after year, while racking up wins in the other Slams. His game was that complete. He was tennis, perfected.
The first time I covered Federer at a Slam was at the U.S. Open in 2014. He had 17 Slams to his credit, but he had long since ceased being inevitable, in part because Nadal and Djokovic had arrived to join him like two other tennis gods capable of throwing thunderbolts back across the net at each other. He was two months removed from one of the greatest matches ever played, his loss in the Wimbledon final to Djokovic.
The image of Federer receiving the second-place trophy, a single tear on his cheek, was a moment almost too good to be real life. That year in New York, after Federer had survived a couple of match points against Gael Monfils, he said he once didn't know what it was like to lose.
“I was so unbelievably confident,” he said of Prime Federer. “I didn't remember losing — how it would happen or how it would work.”
It was such a fascinating thing for an athlete to say: You mean there's a scenario where the match is over and I'm not the one who has prevailed? Huh.
Federer said after pulling out the win against Monfils that he didn't think he had ever saved a match point at a Slam before, which couldn't possibly have been true and yet might have been.
At his height, the thing that made Federer unlike any rival before or since was that there was no single element of his game that was particularly dominant. His serve wasn't overpowering, he didn't have the relentless athleticism of Nadal, he didn't love to sit on the baseline and play long rallies, he didn't charge the net at the first opportunity to shorten points. But he also did all of those things better than most. That was Federer's genius: Start a match playing a certain way, then switch it up, then switch it back again. His opponents would show evident frustration: Oh, you're doing that now? Just after I figured out the first thing? Great. Fine. Super.
“That's why he's Roger Federer, because he change so many times,” Monfils said that night in New York. “Suddenly, he start to mix everything. That's why he's the greatest player, because he can do everything.”
That also helps explain why he was so beloved. He didn't seem possessed of any remarkable physical gifts, unless it is possible to have an innate ability to hit perfect tennis shots. He seemed like a normal fella, but also one who could do anything he wanted on the court. Federer once described tennis in perfectly simple terms. You hope, he said, to hit the perfect shot you need every time. “That, or the other guy completely messes it up,” he said.
That Federer is stepping away so shortly after Serena did provides a nice bit of symmetry. Two of the sport's most dominant stars, born a year apart, so good that they could win big tournaments in their late 30s, but unable to keep denying the twilight forever.
Serena, though, was a machine. No one in her draw had ever played power tennis like her, and when at her best her opponents simply couldn't handle her shots. Federer was never quite like that. He was less a machine than an artist, someone who could calculate the ideal shot — weight, angle, placement — faster than anyone and then execute it. At his best, of course, he wasn't thinking about the next shot, but the one after that, or even the one after that one. That's what made it seem like Federer had unlocked a secret ability, the picture of calm and control even as his opponents were lunging and scrambling all over the place.
Roger Federer is retiring. It will take tennis some time to come to terms with the loss.
Suddenly, he start to mix everything. That's why he's the greatest player, because he can do everything.