Were the BBC’s International Sports Personality title decided by public vote, the betting for 2014 would surely have closed by now. Already as popular as Santa Claus,
Roger Federer is now benefiting from the extra wave of emotion that rewards great athletes in their final act.
What an act it has already been, and how much more it promises to deliver. When Federer arrived in London last November it seemed that the end was nigh. Now, as he goes into this weekend's ATP World Tour Finals with an outside chance of regaining the No 1 ranking, many good judges feel he could play until 2018.
How, then, does he do it? In his exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport, Federer highlights three key areas that have already carried him to five ATP titles and a tour-leading 68 wins this season. And the first insight, passed on to him by his new coach Stefan Edberg, turns out to be highly counterintuitive.
“Stefan wanted me more to play more matches and play tournaments more consistently,” said Federer, who is squeezing 17 events into 2014 – not to mention next month’s
Davis Cup final – where the reigning No 1
Novak Djokovic settled for 15.
“I used to go in spells, but he doesn’t believe in taking too long of a break. He says it’s fine to do that when you’re younger, but when you’re older, maybe it’s easier for your body to keep on playing.
“We took a similar approach in training. Stefan reminded me to keep on playing points, whereas before I would only do that when the next tournament was close. I think it actually helped me to remain in a good rhythm. When you take a direction like that, you’ve got to stick with it and see if it works out. For me it did, because I’ve had no recurring issues any more with my back.”
Federer's 2014 has been full of action and incident, including the arrival of his twin boys in May, yet it has flown by in comparison to his "long and gruelling" 2013. Last year, he was suffering from chronic spinal pain yet still managed to maintain his 15-year unbroken run at the grand slams. He is not one to call trainers to the court, nor to grab parts of his body after he misses a shot, so the outside world reckoned he was completely fit – just a legendary
tennis player whose powers were waning in accordance with the laws of nature.
“Midway through last year, I was like Andy [
Murray] maybe at the beginning of this year,” Federer says now. “You know you’re not 100 per cent but you can’t really say anything about it, because you don’t know whether you’re going to be able to play significantly better in the future. Happily, it turned out that we were both far from our best.”
There was one important difference, however: only one of these men needed an operation to cure their troublesome backs. When ex-players rave about Federer’s glorious career, they envy his ability to stay away from the surgeon’s knife almost as much as his flashing forehand.
Here we come to the second point. At 33, Federer is still lithe and lissom – “a better mover than most 20-year-olds”, in the words of Greg Rusedski – because he has never bought into the baseline attrition that characterises so much modern tennis. He wants to win points quickly, even if it means losing other points just as quickly. Admittedly, he did once spend 4hr 48min on a tennis court against
Rafael Nadal, but we can forgive him that one lapse in the
Wimbledon final of 2008, universally acknowledged as the greatest match ever played.
“I do believe that when you’re playing offensive you have to do less reacting,” says Federer. “Whereas if you’re always reacting to what your opponent gives, it’s very hard. Eventually throughout the week or throughout the year or throughout your career, if you’re always compensating and running after the ball, it’s going to catch up with you.
“But you can work on everything and the best players can play offensive and defensive. I guess Rafa [Nadal] and Andy have more the defensive DNA: they really don’t want to miss but today they’re great attacking players, some of the best in the game. And the same for me and Novak, we’re more attacking players but we’ve also gotten very good at defence.”
Federer’s physical state of grace just seems to be innate. It has prompted a thousand flights of fancy from envious and/or ecstatic writers, including this memorable passage from the late novelist David Foster Wallace: “Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws … a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.”
Foster Wallace was enjoying the show too much to go searching for explanations. But is there a case for linking Federer’s ethereal physical presence with his serene mental state? His biographer, the Swiss journalist René Stauffer, met him for the first time when he was 15 and was struck by this comment above all: “One should just be able to play a perfect game.” As Stauffer explains in the book, “That’s what motivated him … He did not consider his opponents as rivals who wanted to rob the butter from his bread [but] companions on a common path.”
Federer is an anomaly in this respect, for while so many tennis players need a grievance to work with, forever focusing on the pebble in their shoe or the knife in their back, he retains his lightness of being. When he loses, he just sucks it up and moves on. And this is surely the third factor in his enduring relevance.
“I’ve always said that criticism can be used as fuel," he explains. "Whatever works for you, you need to do it. But I’m not like that. For me, just being on the court is enough. And let's say I lose in the finals, I still get together with my team and my friends and I’m like ‘It was a good week.’
“It’s true that the generation of Djokovic, Murray and Nadal has made me a better player, in particular Rafa has challenged me on many fronts, because the way he plays he is so unlike anyone else. But I wouldn’t say I needed that generation to keep me going; I am just here because I love playing the game, I love competing in a stadium against great players. I would have been totally cool just playing with the previous generation that I came up with: Hewitt and Roddick and Ferrero and Safin. Or playing with Raonic and all those guys.”
Federer was holding court from a suite at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, a £450-a-night establishment that hides its grandeur behind a modest exterior. (Ring any bells?) A tightly scheduled day closed with a meet-and-greet on behalf of his sponsors Moët & Chandon, after an earlier visit to the Tower of London with his five-year-old twin daughters. “You should go to the poppy display,” he enthuses. “It’s sad what it is, but it looked absolutely incredible.”
Myla and Charlene now have baby brothers to play with, in Leo and Lenny, yet Federer seems typically unfazed by a juggling act that most people would deem unworkable. His wife Mirka brought all four children to the three most recent grand slams, as well as to Paris for last week’s indoor Masters event – although Shanghai was a few time zones too far. “Obviously we’ve had tougher nights and easier nights, no doubt about it, but I must say things are very smooth. I think we’re more relaxed second time around, whereas the first time you don’t know the hotel set-up, you don’t know how the travelling is going to be, and that can make you panicky. I haven’t seen them much lately, but we’ll all be together for the rest of the year other than when I go to India for two days [to play in Mahesh Bhupathi’s embryonic exhibition series, the International Tennis Premier League].”
His family's absence from China meant that Federer had to make do with vicarious excitement on behalf of
Djokovic, the newest member of the tennis dads' club. As reported in these pages last week, the world No 1 and No 2 have had their differences over the years, yet they seem to have bonded over this one universal experience – something that even millionaire sportsmen can get excited about.
“You could see how eager he was to talk about it,” said Federer. “And I’m very happy to take time. The thing is that we sometimes don’t very often run into each other where we have time. The next thing you know we’re talking for 20 minutes about my experiences. When you’re a father-to-be, there are a lot of open questions. I sensed that he wanted to be as prepared as possible which was I think very cute. I didn’t have much chance to speak to him in Paris [after the birth of baby Stefan on Oct 22], I only saw him briefly for like two minutes and all I could do was just congratulate him. But hopefully he will have time to give me more details that he maybe wouldn’t share with the press.”
Asking Federer for advice about anything can be a little daunting, for the answer is usually the same: “it was great”, “it went really well”, “we had a good time”. He isn’t bluffing: he just has a unique ability to ride out anything that life throws his way, whether it be a second double buggy or a six-month back problem.
Our interview on Thursday ended with a story he told from his teenage years, when he was called into Switzerland’s Davis Cup squad as a training partner for Marc Rosset and the rest. Aged 16, Federer was a vegetarian – on taste grounds rather than ethics – and tried to order rice in a steakhouse. “Marc said ‘Are you crazy or what? No, no, no we’re trying all the meats,'" Federer recalled. "So he got the guy over and we were trying eight different pieces of meat, all very small, and he was like ‘Which one do you like?’ So that’s how I got into eating everything, which makes your life a lot easier when you’re invited somewhere.”
Adaptability, optimism and a curious lack of anxiety: those are as much Federer’s defining characteristics as his movement and strokeplay. His hairline might be receding fractionally at the temples, but he remains the youngest 33-year-old that this intensely ageing sport has ever seen.
