Crying With Roger Federer

Two years ago Roger Federer retired as a professional tennis player. Or to put it another way: two years ago, perhaps the greatest player in the history of the sport retired. And it’s not just me saying it, it’s a guy named John McEnroe (who was by no means a bad tennis player) who says it in Prime Video’s new documentary, “Federer: Twelve Final Days.” Every tennis fan has had their “Federer moment” phrase that I take from a wonderful 2006 article written by David Foster Wallace in The New York Times: “Roger Federer as Religious Experience” and where the author of Infinite Jest mentioned that some of Federer’s movements were like something out of “The Matrix.”

My Federer moment was back in 2001. Roger was just 19 years old and facing Pete Sampras in the Wimbledon final. Sampras had been winning that tournament for five years in a row, and if he won that year he would break the record of another great, the legendary and almost mythical Swedish tennis player Björn Borg. That game was simply incredible. I can only compare it to another sporting event: Ali vs. Foreman. In the end Roger destroyed Sampras, who retired the following year. What I didn’t know, and what I found out thanks to this documentary, is that minutes after the end of that match, Björn Borg phoned Federer to thank him for not letting Sampras break his record. And coincidentally, Borg was Federer’s great hero, to whom he respectfully responded: “Well, thank you, but I didn’t do it for you.”

This documentary, directed by Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia, follows the last 12 days of Federer’s professional career culminating in the 2022 Laver Cup (a tournament organized by Federer’s company but part of the ATP tour) and shows something rarely seen: Federer has emotions, the guy cries. He is human! Because the thing about Federer was always the same: he is a perfect player, maybe so perfect that he doesn’t lose his mind like McEnroe himself or even Novak Djokovic; so he gave the impression that whatever happened, whether he won (Federer won 80% of all the matches he played in his professional career) or lost, he was always in physical, mental and emotional control. Well, in this documentary, goodbye to emotional control and welcome to cry, baby.

In this last tournament, Federer is accompanied by those who were his main rivals during almost his entire career: Rafael Nadal, with whom he plays in a doubles team in the final of the tournament (they lose), Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. And it’s great fun to watch them interact off the court. But there is something interesting and that is that you can feel the tension among all of them about Federer’s retirement, because these players are also very close to the end of their careers. And talking about that, retirement, is almost a taboo subject for them. Because tennis is not a sport or a profession but their lives. And it must not be easy to feel that you are no longer Roger Federer, the best tennis player in history… and to show it.

Federer always said that if he was injured and an operation was required, he would retire that day. But he did not keep that promise, as he had to undergo four knee operations that ended his career at 41, an age almost considered miraculous for a professional tennis player.

McEnroe called Federer a “Barýshnikov on the tennis court.” I think that comparison says it all, but there is also another thing that Federer himself explains in the documentary and that from my point of view separates him from the rest of the tennis players in history: Federer always enjoyed winning in the opponent’s territory. It is difficult to establish which were Federer’s best moves or techniques, because he had no weaknesses, so what characterized him was to enter his opponent’s territory, whatever his opponent considered his comfort zone, and finish him there. And not just in terms of court surfaces, like Rafael Nadal on clay, but if the opponent was a deep court player, that’s how Federer played; or if he preferred to play close to the net, that’s how Federer played. He was a challenger par excellence. And always under control. How can you beat a guy who is just going to attack your strengths?

But I have a big problem with this documentary, although it is a contradiction and I recognize it. As a Federer fan I spent years waiting to see his human side and here is his human side; many tears and emotions. But it is a documentary about the retirement, the goodbye, the farewell of the best tennis player of all time. He was perfection made a reality on any surface, in any tournament, against any rival, a God waving his tennis racket with the same grace and power that Thor wielded his hammer Mjölnir. But in 88 minutes, the least we see is, precisely, tennis.

We don’t see clips of Federer in his best tournaments, his exploits, his defeats. We do not see that God on the tennis courts crushing his rivals and suffering against others. There is almost no tennis in a documentary about tennis. But there is a great moment that sums up the feeling of all those who love this sport, and that is when we see Mirka, Federer’s wife, who says crying: “I will miss watching him play.” For God’s sake, someone hug that poor woman. We’ll miss him too, Mirka.