Roger Federer, whoever or whatever, was bestowed a natural gift for playing tennis. It’s evident that his racquet has always been an extension of his surgical right arm and that the Swiss also has a privileged ability to spot and draw angles that don’t exist in the minds of most tennis players. There was certainly no player with greater determination to decide the point, or so fabulous at executing the shot, whether on the move or standing still. Alongside his technical mastery, there is also an extraordinary ability to make the most difficult things easy: a Binomial, which is as uncontrollable as space-time, to reconcile.
It has not escaped anyone that Federer is a gifted player, but those who have followed his footsteps or know him well speak of a born worker. There’s magic and innateness, virtuosity yes, but behind the legend there’s also hours of honing and rehearsing. Despite having evolved on the track from a sixth sense and on many occasions from improvisational flashes of inspiration, the Swiss has never been stingy when it comes to hitting the gym and analyzing his rivals. He loves to watch the games and his build is deceptive: while no Hercules, he’s skinny as reeds and has a lower body of steel.
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That said, behind the entire show and unlikely points is a full-fledged hard worker. Federer is born, but also made. “There’s always room to improve a little,” he admitted in May 2019 at the last meeting with EL PAÍS. “It can be a hit here or there, or how you organize to recalibrate everything, the mental preparation of where I train… There’s always little things to do. I always try to return to my best level and for that I have to prove it day by day,” he added during this meeting at the Caja Mágica in Madrid, which lasted half an hour and in which he not only talked about his tennis in depth he delved into his intimacy, stating that if he had had a choice, he would have liked to have been “a normal person.”
Federer never was. At least not in tennis. His perfectionist profile and constant desire to evolve and refine a very Cartesian proposal gave rise to a player very different from the one who started beating his first places; essentially the same but different. To do this, he uses numerous technicians who file edges, provide solutions and adapt to the times. The original Federer, who got angry easily in his youth and lost his temper on more than one occasion, is not the same as the mature tennis player who racked up Grand Slams or the veteran who was forced to reinvent himself in his thirties to cope with it to follow beat.
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The Mirror by Michael Jordan
He never stopped innovating. The same was invented to corner the rivals who converted the backhand to harden and counter, or redesigned his Wilson (lighter, wider and thicker) in search of flatter and more damaging trajectories. Age didn’t matter. That was key to mollifying Rafael Nadal’s devastating right.
“He changed tennis forever,” praises Ivan Ljubicic, the last coach who shaped it together with his friend Severin Lüthi. “He has been voted the favorite tennis player by fans for 19 years in a row [en la votación propuesta por la ATP a final de cada temporada] and has taken tennis to another level. All his rivals had to evolve to keep up with him,” adds the coach, completing a long list that reflects the Swiss’ constant desire to step up a notch.
Roger Federer, Billie Jean King and Michael Jordan in 2014. MATTHEW STOCKMAN (AFP)
On the orders of Peter Carter (1998-2000), who died in a traffic accident that left a severe mark on the tennis player, he left to join the elite; took over the baton (from 2000 to 2003) Peter Lundgren, with whom he raised his first major (Wimbledon 2003); then came Tony Roche (2005-2007) and the Spaniard José Higueras, hired (2008) with the aim of rethinking his game on clay and thus entering the top of Roland Garros; Paul Annacone would later sit on the bench and before the Croatian Ljubicic settled down as an advisor on the final straight (from 2015), the Swiss worked with one of his idols, the Swede Stefan Edberg, with whom he gained aggressiveness and aggressiveness between 2014 and 2015 multiplied his game at the net.
“I’m not Mr. Perfect”
Apart from the exquisiteness of the forms and the sobriety on the court, they all describe a victory eater and a meticulous and fierce competitor who drew inspiration from his great idol: basketball player Michael Jordan. “He was the player. He surpassed basketball and was a hero for our entire generation,” Federer said a few years ago. “His longevity, the way he made it look easy, his drive to win, to want to be the best, to succeed under pressure, to be a superstar in a team sport, to excel for so many years… He, he was my hero.”
In addition to the 23 of the cops, he also had connections to Edberg himself and the German Boris Becker. In all of them he found hints, tricks, solutions and motivation to push boundaries. “I don’t think I’m perfect, I want to keep being someone normal. I think that the media created this image of me a bit,” the Swiss assured EL PAÍS in an interview conducted in May 2015 with the French embassy as a framework. In times of vanities and more than questionable models, Federer’s sensible message: “I know that I’m a reference for many children and I take that very seriously, but I don’t think Mr. Perfect is the right adjective for me, it is totally exaggerated”.
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