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Roger Federer - When suddenly the words fail

Roger Federer announced the end of his career on Thursday. The Swiss will leave a big gap in tennis. A tribute.

by Nikolaus Fink
last edit: Sep 15, 2022, 06:17 pm

Roger Federer won 20 Grand Slam titles in his career

At some point the moment had to come - and yet Roger Federer's announced resignation is a big shock for all observers of the scene. Because the fact that the Swiss would end his career after the Laver Cup was not necessarily to be expected given his statements in the recent past.

The fact that Federer's career now - the Laver Cup is hidden at this point - ends with a 0: 6 in the Wimbledon quarter-finals against Hubert Hurkacz may seem unworthy, but in retrospect it will fortunately only be a side note. Federer's merits on and off the pitch are far too great for that.

Federer wins 20 Grand Slam tournaments

Federer won 103 singles titles in his career - 20 of them at Grand Slam level - and was number one in the world for 310 weeks. In addition, he was Olympic doubles champion alongside Stan Wawrinka in Beijing in 2008 and won the Davis Cup with Switzerland in 2014. Federer has won everything there is to win in tennis and yet it is not these numbers alone that make the now 41-year-old probably the most popular player of all time.

Rather, it is an aesthetic that can hardly be described, with which the "Maestro" has enchanted his fans for years. While his constant rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic enriched the sport with other attributes, Federer sometimes made the game look amazingly easy. It only became apparent during the course of his career that the Swiss also has a fighting heart weighing tons.

This circumstance became particularly evident at the Australian Open 2017. After around six months of injury time-out, Federer celebrated tennis from another planet in Melbourne and celebrated what is probably the most emotional triumph of his career with an epic comeback victory over Nadal. "The time in Australia at the beginning of the year was perhaps the best of my career," Federer would later say about the magical weeks "Down Under".

A year later, Federer won the last of his 20 Grand Slam titles in Melbourne, and the long-standing world number one in Wimbledon in 2019 missed the greatest opportunity at number 21. In the final against Djokovic, the Swiss found two match balls on his own serve, but had to leave the field as a loser.

Bitter defeats were part of the game for Federer - it would not have been possible otherwise with such a long career. However, he never let himself be thrown off course by them. Instead, Federer always drew the right conclusions and knew how to continuously improve in the autumn of his career. Which is shown, among other things, by the recent record against his longtime nemesis Nadal.

Federer, which he also emphasized in his resignation statement, loved tennis like no other player. And changed it forever. While the "maestro" was still a hothead when he was young, he then matured into a world athlete par excellence, who today also goes far beyond the limits of tennis enjoys great popularity.

Federer as the figurehead of tennis

His always polite and humble dealings with opponents, officials, fans and the media made Federer the absolute figurehead of tennis. No less impressive is the grandeur with which the 20-time major champion reconciled family life - Federer is the father of two pairs of twins - and work.

Looking at the bare numbers, Federer will not go down in history as the greatest player of all time. But the Swiss has probably done more for men's tennis than any other professional before. So much that words almost fail you - and you can only come to one conclusion: Roger Federer was the best thing that could have happened to tennis in the past few decades.