Mirka Federer — the rock in Roger’s corner
WHEN the TV cameras pan along Roger Federer’s player’s box there is often a celebrity there for them to feast on, such as Gavin Rossdale, the Britishborn singer from the rock band Bush, or American Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
But one figure has been a common denominator for the past decade — one figure described by Federer as the “rock in my corner”, whose provocative support during the semifinal of the ATP Tour Final caused Stanislas Wawrinka to complain about her behaviour.
That is Mirka, his wife, who continues to travel to the majority of his tournaments (except mainly those in the Far East) even though she now has four small children in tow.
We might well have known Mirka Federer — or Vavrinec, to use her maiden name — as a tennis star in her own right had it not been for the crippling foot injuries that afflicted her fiveyear career. Even despite those handicaps she still reached a high point of No 76 in the world in 2001, which is hardly shabby. Her stated aim of breaking the top 30 would probably have been achieved had her body not betrayed her.
Federer’s wife comes — like those other famous Swiss tennis figures Martina Hingis and Belinda Bencic — from a Czech background, only moving to a town on the shores of Lake Constance at the age of two.
She was initially encouraged to try tennis as an eight-yearold by another Czech-born defector, Martina Navratilova, who happened to know the Vavrinecs and even put them up for a few days when she was staying in Switzerland in 1987.
The strength of Mirka’s character has been evident since her early days as a tennis professional. When she won the Swiss junior title, aged only 15, she told a magazine that “tennis is my life, but it certainly can’t be easy to work with me because I can be really stubborn”.
René Stauffer’s biography of Federer quotes a story of Mirka’s determination to play in Croatia during the war in 1993, despite the journey taking her past burnt-out villages, cars and tanks.
“Her ambition and her uncompromising nature were tremendous,” Stauffer writes, but she was forced to retire in 2002, aged 24, after a second operation on her foot left her on crutches.
“Roger was my greatest support back then,” she said, in an interview that described her black mood during an eight-
She understands the big picture extremely well and does a great job in terms of letting us work
month rehabilitation process.
“He gave my tennis life back to me. When he wins it’s as if I win as well.”
Mirka and Federer have been a couple since they became close during the Olympic tennis tournament in Sydney in 2000. They married in 2009, and until relatively recently she was his manager and commercial consultant. These days those roles have mostly passed on to Tony Godsick, who became Federer’s agent at IMG and then left the umbrella company to found his own boutique agency, Team8, in partnership with Federer.
But Mirka remains at the heart of everything that Federer does. “She still plays a huge role and has great input and impact,” said Paul Annacone, Federer’s former coach, in an interview with the New York Times last year.
“She understands the big picture extremely well and does a great job in terms of letting us work, but also shares invaluable information. This is a tricky balance. She’s been there since day one, so she knows very well what it takes and how to get there.”
Federer’s wife and family are not expected to attend the Davis Cup final, which ends in Lille today, but his Swiss teammates were close by his side on Thursday as they smiled their way through the draw ceremony.
Beneath frescoes of cherubs in the city’s lovely Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie, Federer and his teammate Wawrinka were just as beatific as the murals as they prepared for the battle with the French inside the town’s spanking new football stadium.
Mirka is understood to be skipping the event, which may be a bonus for team unity after her dramatic contribution to Saturday’s semifinal at the O2 Arena in London.
But Wawrinka was right on message as he downplayed the fallout from the controversial match, which was followed by a frank and full exchange of views between the two players in the courtside gym.
“I took a lot of positives from that week. I’m feeling great from London, a lot of confidence from there,” he said.
The attention can now shift from the soap opera of the Swiss rift — which has apparently healed and reached its natural conclusion in any case — and on to the equally thorny question of Federer’s back. — © The Daily Telegraph, London