In tennis, people retire—at all ages and sometimes more than once. Not the kind of retirement Roger Federer just announced, in which the 20-time major tournament champion will hang up his sneakers and find other things to do. Not what Serena Williams described as her “evolving away” from competition.
No. In tennis, “retire” is the verb the sport uses to describe a player quitting mid-match, usually because of injury or illness. And here’s the irony to Federer’s definitive farewell to competition at 41. He never, in 1,526 singles and 223 doubles matches over 24 years as a pro, left a match prematurely. Though back troubles and several knee surgeries messed with his playing schedule and kept him away from the tour most of the last two years, once he began a match, he never left until it was over.
In a big way, that sums up Federer’ tennis presence. His persistence. His ability to come up with solutions, on the fly, while appearing dispassionate. His serene air of effortlessness. His intuitive feel for the game.
All the inevitable statistical comparisons now being aired of Federer’s place in history alongside his great rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic aren’t really the point. (Nadal and Djokovic, by the way, did retire from matches multiple times.) Numbers—Grand Slam titles, winning percentages, time spent ranked No. 1—are significant, grist for lively sports-talk arguments, but they don’t convey a sense of what it was like to witness Federer in action.
The late novelist David Foster Wallace years ago wrote of hearing a press-bus driver, during the Wimbledon championships, describe watching Federer play tennis as a “bloody near-religious experience.”
Wallace agreed wholeheartedly. “Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments,” Wallace wrote. “These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.”
In 2008, when Federer was in the midst of his most devastating run, reaching 22 of 27 major-tournament finals—and winning 16 of them—an 18-year-old American named Devin Britton, in Britton’s first and only Grand Slam tournament match, drew Federer in the first round of the U.S. Open. After the match, which Federer won handily, Britton related that Federer’s forehand “is so pretty” that Britton, fully aware of the danger to him, purposely hit to that forehand at times—“just to watch.”
At the 2007 U.S. Open, when Federer broke out a pseudo-tuxedo look for night matches—all black, with a silvery stripe down the shorts—it seemed to emphasize how his game was worthy of top hat and tails. Serve-and-volley gone to verve-and-volley.
He seemed to glide around the court, noiselessly in an age of grunting workers, moving his opponent from side to side, back and forth—almost casually—adding spin, subtracting pace. He played without histrionics, without bickering over calls or doing touchdown dances or constantly going to the towel.
For so long, playing Federer could be like shooting rubber bands at Superman. His power and control were the kind of things that could make opponents sleep with the lights on. He was the Swiss army knife of tennis, taking apart opponents as if using a blade, screwdriver, toothpick, tweezer and can opener.
Eight-time major-tournament champion Andre Agassi, whose career was winding down as Federer’s long rule peaked, once compared Federer to Pete Sampras—whose previous record of 14 Slam titles Federer surpassed when Federer was 28:
“You play a bad match against Pete, you lose, 6-4, 7-5,” Agassi said. “You play a good match against Pete, you lose, 6-4, 7-5. You play a good match against Federer, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a bad match against Federer, you lose, 1 and 1.”
The only incongruous reaction to Federer, which popped up around 2005, before Nadal and Djokovic began to put the slightest dent in Federer’s reign, was that Federer’s stylish supremacy somehow was bad for tennis.
Federer didn’t always win, of course. Both Nadal and Djokovic wound up having winning records in head-to-head matches against Federer. But Federer’s tennis never ceased to be terrific theatre. Seventeen years into his career, he conjured an aggressive, innovative shot—a charging, short-hop return against second serves. A Geronimo! leap that logically would be service-return suicide, but which occasionally buoyed him in dire situations. The shot was dubbed SABR—Sneak Attack By Roger. More legerdemain from the game’s wizard.
But about retirement, the end-of-career sort. Federer started to hear questions about that more than a decade ago, with still multiple major-tournament titles in his future. Around 2018, a tennis website posted an April Fool’s joke “announcing” Federer’s retirement. “No plans to retire,” he assured in response. “Don’t even use that word.”
He always said he had too much enjoyment for every aspect of his job. The matches. The training. The travel. Everything about his lifestyle. But, as always happens in such occupations, age and diminished physical skills eventually win out. So he will retire. For him, another first.