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Opinion
Roger Federer will retire sitting third on the list of most men’s grand slam titles – behind both of his closest, most career-defining rivals in Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
He also ends with losing records against both men – 16-24 against Nadal, 23-27 against Djokovic. His record of the most weeks as world No.1 by a man was taken from him by Djokovic last year. He’s long been third for most Masters 1000 titles. He never won an Olympics singles gold, unlike Nadal.
None of that matters in the least, though. Because the legacy that Federer leaves behind, his impact on the sport as a whole, his unprecedented universal popularity and the unmatched grace, poise and brilliance with which he played all make his status as tennis’ ‘GOAT’ all but unquestionable.
At least in this author’s opinion.
Records in sport are fleeting – they are, as the old saying goes, made to be broken.
In time, perhaps even Nadal’s 22 grand slam wins and counting, or Djokovic’s record should he surpass the Spaniard, will be broken as well, for some other young upstart to surpass.
But it’s quite another thing to leave a mark on your sport as indelible as the one Federer has left on tennis. If you need proof of that, look at the incredible, instant reaction from around the world to his retirement announcement on Thursday night (AEST).
Channel 9 had Todd Woodbridge and Alicia Molik on hand past midnight to wax lyrical about his extraordinary career. Fans everywhere took to social media to share their devastation, post highlights and reminisce.
The current men’s world number one, Carlos Alcaraz, summed things up perfectly:
Keep in mind that this has come more than 12 months since Federer’s last professional game, at Wimbledon in 2021. All the while, injuries repeatedly forestalled any comebacks, saw his ranking plummet first outside the world’s top 10, then the top 50, and the last lingering hope fans had of him staving off Nadal and Djokovic surpassing his grand slam tally dissipated.
Like the Queen’s passing (I’m aware that there are some sizeable limits to this analogy), news of Federer’s retirement was far from unexpected, but no less poignant or emotional for it.
Perhaps Nadal or Djokovic – Rafa especially – will have the same outpouring of emotion once they decide to call it quits. But I’d argue not even the legendary Serena Williams, who unlike Federer had the emotions dialled up to 11 with a powerful farewell tour at the US Open just weeks ago, had a send-off quite this all-encompassing.
Many sports have great champions, iconic figures who dominate the statistics, win and win and win and win, and receive adulation for it. Federer is unique in that, for a significant chunk of his career, he has played second and even third fiddle to Nadal and Djokovic; regularly losing to them in major tournaments even while his record remained intact.
It’d be like Pele running into Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi while he was still playing.
Some will argue that this status diminishes his claims on GOAT status. For me, it enhances it.
For Federer’s tennis legacy goes far beyond his on-court exploits, in a way that Nadal and certainly Djokovic never truly have.
He’s a player who can somehow face a player at their home event, and still have the majority of the crowd on his side – as he did against John Millman at the 2020 Australian Open, to much surprise.
Despite being at its soul an individual sport, countries have an interesting connection to players ‘representing’ them on the world stage, and invariably want them to succeed – look at the way Australia has got behind Nick Kyrgios and Ajla Tomljanovic at recent slams, for example. But Federer never belonged to merely Switzerland – he was an honourary citizen of any country he showed up in.
His philanthropic work, surely, plays a part – but then again, Nadal and Djokovic too are incredible generous with their time and money. Nadal especially is loved for possessing many of Federer’s off-court attributes – humility, class and grace are traits both men share.
Yet if Nadal’s style of tennis was the essence of determination and resilience, admirable more for his sheer force of will than the spectacle itself, Federer’s was undeniably beautiful in every convention.
Smoothly roaming the court with an innate ability to hit the most gorgeous of winners off both forehand and backhand wings, he’d drop jaws with trick shots, paint the lines with surgical precision, and show the deftest touch to ever be seen on a tennis court. All the while being cheered on by millions, if not billions.
I’ve often considered Nadal and Djokovic to play tennis as if perfected by an algorithm: relentless, ruthless if not slightly monotonous at times. Federer’s style always felt so incredibly human: artistry in motion, he’d make more mistakes, shank more forehands, send more backhands crashing into the net – but in between make us gasp, or laugh, or sing, or just stare open-mouthed at his latest miracle.
Nadal and Djokovic are tennis automata – so ridiculously superior that they offer not the slightest chance of replication, and even to challenge them is like facing the most intelligent supercomputer specifically designed to fulfil its purpose.
Federer, in contrast, inspired devotion partly because his style seemed, if not reachable in theory, then reachable in imagination: he’s how you wished you could play tennis if you were a little better.
He’s beloved among the fans, but perhaps even more so by his fellow players. He won the peer-voted Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award 13 times in 14 years between 2004 and 2017; it’s worth noting too that as his career wound down, it has been Nadal to win four in a row, having finally not had to compete with the Swiss great any longer.
My key point in all of this is that there is, to my mind, a distinction between the ‘best’ in a certain field, and the ‘greatest’. The former implies a sporting superiority that is instantly debatable, paradoxically both instantly quantifiable and seldom ever certifiable, and mostly fleeting.
Greatness, on the other hand, runs deeper, lasts longer, and is harder to catch.
You’ll never be able to measure how much influence Federer has had on the game, how many people fell in love with tennis through watching him and how many would stay up until stupid o’clock all around the world to watch him play.
But the evidence is there every time he stepped onto the court, and a tidal wave of sound would spread across the arena; or for a more immediate example, in the way the world – and not just the tennis world – has come together to reflect upon his retirement.
It’s even achieved the impossible and got Piers Morgan sounding reasonable. Surely that’s worth an extra grand slam or two.
Djokovic and Nadal both have arguably stronger claims on the ‘best’ title than Federer, but issues such as the times in which they played – the former duo hit their primes with Roger passing his – the disparity between matches on Nadal’s preferred surface of clay and Federer’s on grass, and many other factors make this a neverending debate that will never have an answer.
Really, we’re lucky to have witnessed, in the same generation, three players so worthy of the ‘GOAT’ moniker as to make it deserving of debate in the first place.
Greatness goes beyond the physical. It transcends specific sports – hell, it transcends sport in general. It’s impossible to measure like playing records and statistics. You can’t, after all, ever calculate love.
In much the same way as boxing is forever linked with Muhammad Ali, or baseball with Babe Ruth, or cricket with Don Bradman, or gymnastics with Nadia Comenaci, Roger Federer is more than just a titan of tennis. For so many people, he is tennis.
Wherever he ends up in the list of all-time greats when the last tennis ball is struck in anger in a thousand generations’ time, there will be no forgetting Roger Federer.
As long as people watch videos, THAT point against Nadal in the 2017 Australian Open final will be shared and reshared, to delight a generation of fans.
As long as championship points are played, people will remember the time he had and spurned two of them in the 2019 Wimbledon decider to Djokovic, and feel sick about it all over again.
As long as up-and-coming young talents emerge with a brisk forehand and a desire to play attacking shots, they will be compared to the man who crafted that style in his own image, inspiring generations to follow – many of whom he’d end up playing before the end.
It may take another hundred years to come across an athlete as universally admired and beloved. And it’s that, more than any title Roger Federer ever won, that will remain his enduring legacy, and the biggest and best reason to enshrine him as tennis’ greatest ever.
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