(Offered by Tennis World USA)
It has been virtually a yr since Roger Federer introduced his retirement. It was a Friday night in September, it was the primary day of the Laver Cup: a doubles match along with his good friend and rival Rafael Nadal was the final match performed by the Swiss champion after greater than twenty years of profession.Roger embodies the proper prototype of the tennis participant.
Successful, elegant, with a tennis that has reached ranges of unattainable magnificence. Roger agreed on the court docket to every thing an athlete can embody.Victories, defeats, pleasure and tears, the person who’s the god of tennis, however who, within the hardest moments of his profession, turns into humanly human.
Grace in defeats, the aura and character of infinite class, the purpose of connection between the previous and the brand new. A glamorous life off the court docket, a love story with Mirka that’s worthy of a romantic movie. Cash as if there have been no tomorrow, charity, and, in a single, symbolic sentence: pure poetry gradual to tennis.
He’s like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol, Elvis, Freddy Mercury or William Shakespeare, he marked historical past. A pop icon of our Period.When a fan thinks of tennis a picture comes earlier than the court docket, earlier than the ball, the racket or the web: it’s the picture of Roger Federer.
Current at an occasion for Uniqlo and interviewed by the New York Instances, the twenty-time Grand Slam champion returned to the sensations he skilled after saying goodbye to tennisHe defined: “Life with out the sport, life with out the followers and life with out the present that has dominated my life for 25 years was undoubtedly one thing I did not know the way I used to be going to take.
For a very long time I attempted to return and provides myself one other probability, to go away this sport wholesome, however it simply wasn’t possible. However the good and dangerous factor about Covid and with my knee surgical procedure, is that every thing has began to decelerate within the final three years, so it is not like I are available in after taking part in 100 video games after which increase, it is over.
In the long run, I used to be relieved, I feel, and blissful to retire. It ended completely on the Laver Cup. I used to be surrounded by my greatest rivals, and my household and mates have been there. For me it was like: OK, I am high quality now.”Retirement allowed Roger Federer to increase his horizons.
From the co-chair on the Met Gala to the presence within the Royal Field at Wimbledon, passing by means of his look on stage on the Coldplay live performance in Zurich, a brand new life has begun for the Swiss tennis participant.He mentioned: “I’ve at all times been strict and critical about being knowledgeable athlete, however I might eat hamburgers, I might eat desserts, I might drink a glass of wine.
For me, consuming a hamburger was nothing out of the atypical, however this one appeared excellent, so I I needed to put up an image of it. I am doing issues that weren’t possible once I was taking part in as a result of it took too lengthy.”