Roger Federer has announced his retirement from tennis. (AP)
Finally the news we didn’t want to have arrived: Roger Federer’s retirement. It was already something that was about to fall, but clearly that self-preservation instinct made us think it was not going to happen.
Roger Federer, who has been able to challenge everyone and in all the tournaments on which he has walked, regardless of its surface, has been able to shine. But she could not – showing all her humanity – against the passage of time and even in this it confused us. We think it was timeless because its ability to reinvent itself and its level of play has improved and grown over the years.
When many were already entering the sunset, Roger Federer warned us that he was walking that path and gave us once again the enormous joy and privilege of being able to continue to enjoy his tennis and every time a renewed, evolved tennis. And that’s why we felt we had the illusion that Roger could also beat time because he had been able to beat the new generations and because his latest good versions of him were far superior to those that made him Roger Federer.
The amazing thing is that he is one of those figures who is still in full force and as if he has left the rankings aside. Federer no longer had rankings. He was already Roger Federer and it doesn’t matter if he was 1, 3, 5 or 8. Federer managed to persuade those who had ever seen tennis to set an alarm at 3:30 in the morning just to see him play, and this has happened pretty much everywhere on the planet.
He became a figure who amazed for his ability to perform, for his style, for his hierarchy, for his presence. I think describing Roger Federer is already something that we are all exempt from doing. But I want to go back to what Roger Federer has become. Where does it come from? Because I was lucky enough to be able to follow his career as an ESPN commentator and he started in ’98, that is when I left in ’97, Federer made his entry into professionalism, but I was able to follow him through my work on television Commenting on matches.
But before, when Federer was just starting out, he was a talented player, he was a player with enormous potential, he was a player who wasn’t characterized by pushing himself too hard and who had that chance to play great tennis sometimes without much effort. , but clearly no one could have imagined that that young man with long hair and a very weak and very vulnerable backhand when you attacked him from that place would become what he was.
I think that is what, personally, leaves me much more amazed because he was not born already destined to be number one in the world and to be one of the best or the best of all time. Because for many he was a Swiss who if you attacked him from the backhand or if you insisted on him from the backhand had no where to fight and had no way to overtake you, and the formula for playing that young man who also sometimes had too much ball and a little too much of the circumstances had an extremely vulnerable side.
The truth is that Federer imposed something that took me some time to understand when he was starting to win major titles and was starting to win the Master 1000 and was starting to access the final instances, the Grand Slam titles. My obligation and my function as a commentator was to determine in a certain way what Federer’s identity was, what his characteristics were, and I admit that at one point I felt that it was difficult for me to decipher them until at one point I realized that Federer was simply playing on your imperfection.
He had reached such a level of excellence that he no longer even had his own style but played to show his imperfection. If a roll was badly decided by his opponent, the way he responded and played you, if you analyzed quickly, it was showing you what your mistake was.
And that was one of his great virtues because in general all the great tennis players were characterized by having a very clear shape, identity, style. Roger played you, as he said, to your imperfection and to do that you had to have enormous qualities. Being an extremely intelligent player, endowed with an enormous ability to execute, having great clarity, above all, also to continue to maintain that aesthetic issue when many times the speed, the vertiginousness of the game forced him to hit him at times as he could or to try to get there by any way.
Federer in this continued to keep his clothes almost without sweating and that is why he marveled. The truth is that it has achieved what I think practically no one has achieved in the world because since those alarm clocks rang at the start of Roger Federer’s match wherever he was, it has also reached a huge number of loyal fans who, in the face of an eventual defeating him meant not watching that tournament anymore. “Federer lost and that Grand Slam ended for me”many have said on social media.
The truth is Federer has enlightened tennis. He started a rivalry and even managed to make that great opponent a source of inspiration for him and a friend. And with Federer it must be said that he lacks words because he was able to generate that I don’t know what but the admiration he arouses in you is unparalleled. And in this I will make a self-reference to simply try to explain and mention what Roger Federer was like and tell two vivid anecdotes.
In the Masters he won in Houston in 2003, I had to do my first television interview. I had to do it in English and translate both the question and the answer. You can imagine my nerves. The point is that, while waiting, Roger Federer approaches and the situation for me was very, very stressful, he approaches me, I introduce myself to him and he says to me: “Yes, I know you because you hit Peter Lundgren with a ball”. The Swede had been his coach for many years and had told him the story. “Yes, he told me the Newport story,” he confirmed. So for me the ice had already melted.
The point is that it was a note that I will never forget because we ended up talking about everything and he was also relaxed and put humor in us because he told everything that Peter Lundgren suffered from that involuntary blow that was when we faced each other in a doubles tournament in Newport in the United States. From that moment on, the situation changed and every time a match ended and we had to interview him, he would often ask me: “Do you want the ticket?” And I said yes, but we are online and there are other media ahead. He said to me: “No, don’t give it, let them wait. Let’s do it. “That was Roger Federer. Friendly, humble, street, but at the same time very sophisticated.
And the other great anecdote was in Bogotá after a performance he had done in Buenos Aires with Juan Martín del Potro, in Tigre. I meet him in Bogotá, because I was invited to that exhibition with Tsonga, and I’m lucky enough to meet him at the restaurant and have breakfast with his manager, Tony Godsick, and Roger Federer appears, sits down for a few minutes, greets me and tells me : “I didn’t see you in Buenos Aires”. I couldn’t believe it.
In addition, he had already commented in some other interviews about the madness that was there for him in Argentina. And many Argentine tennis players had already told him. But he never measured it. And when he came to Tigre it was a delusion. With total amazement Roger commented to me: “I never imagined what you told me was at that level. It was such a surprise that my eyes filled with tears at the entrance. I can’t believe it. ”Hearing it made you feel like you were with a normal guy.
With this, the only thing I want to emphasize is how someone who at that time already knew and ran into hundreds of people could be absolutely connected with everything and everyone. That’s why when you wanted to put him very high, Roger was able to recover and in that gesture there can be no greater humanity, greater humility than that admired and considered the greatest of all time, always and throughout his career he had feet on the ground . That’s why no one could make him escape from there, he never walked away from it and the truth is that Roger will miss him like few others.
Javier Frana
Source: Clarin
