Roger Federer to retire at Laver Cup: "To the game of tennis—I love you, and will never leave you"

Four words that will bring a tear to millions: Roger Federer will retire.

Say it again, just to be sure: Roger Federer will retire.

The notion of a Federer exit had been bandied about for years, through back injuries and knee surgeries, painful exits and lengthy exiles. Now it has come true. Tennis will lose its most popular player.

Merely tennis, though? Consider this: A 2011 poll revealed that Federer was the second-most respected person in the world—behind only Nelson Mandela—and ahead of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI.

WATCH: Roger Federer, through the ages

How had it come to pass that a tennis player could be held in such esteem? Over the last 50 years, many tennis players have had spotlight moments and crossed over into mainstream culture. In many cases, they generated exposure less for what they did with their racquets and more for a variety of factors, ranging from cultural significance to lively tempers to social activism.

But Federer was something altogether different, captivating in a way that concurrently transcended tennis—yet also displayed it with an unsurpassed blend of flair and grace. It didn’t matter if you barely knew the sport or had been around it for 50 years: Federer was tennis’ avatar, a dazzling representation of tennis’ possibilities. No one has ever left more people swooning about all this sport can be.

Sure, Federer did his share of charity work, most notably aiding the cause of education in his mother Lynette’s native South Africa. Yes, he had a vast portfolio of corporate partnerships with such sterling global consumer brands as Rolex and Mercedes, as well as a lifetime contract with Wilson Sporting Goods and a $300 million clothing agreement with Uniqlo.

But at heart, Federer made tennis more visible largely through the game itself.

Federer’s genius began with the way he carried his body, from stance to movement. Like a ballerina, Federer appeared to glide more than trod, arriving at the point of contact with superb posture and balance. Such discipline and elegance yielded a spectrum of shot possibilities Federer deployed to befuddle opponents, delight spectators and even please himself. Speeds and spins, angles and power: all of it was at Federer’s command. He was as complete a player as tennis has ever seen.

Notably, Federer’s victims rarely felt bludgeoned. They were dissected, methodically and deftly shredded by everything from his pinpoint serve to whip-like forehand to a backhand he often sliced wickedly short—and then drove deep. No one in tennis history has possessed as many different point-winning combinations as Federer. That variety, and the smoothness with which it was executed, was a major factor for his popularity.

As the arc of Federer’s career shows, all of this genius didn’t instantly reveal itself. Over the course of more than 20 years, his game evolved, with subtle but significant shifts that allowed him to stay at least one step ahead of the bulk of his contemporaries.

Set the Tennis Wayback Machine to July 2, 2001. Centre Court at Wimbledon was the fitting venue for Federer’s only match versus Pete Sampras. This fourth-round battle was filled with many ups and downs, Federer winning it 7-6 (7), 5-7, 6-4, 6-7 (2), 7-5. It was also filled with net-rushing, Federer approaching the net 121 times, including 107 serve-and-volley efforts.

He was 19 then, on the brink of greatness—but also, at times, simply on the brink. In the early stages of his career, Federer appeared to treat his vast potential lightly, not always devoting himself to matters of practice and match play. But then came a life-changing moment: on August 1, 2002, the coach who’d most formed Federer’s game, Peter Carter, died in a car accident. Carter’s death had a catalytic effort on Federer, compelling him to see that the time had come to thoroughly do whatever it took to maximize the wide spectrum of skills the two of them had sharpened together.

By 2002, the grass had Wimbledon had become far slower. Changes in string technology had also given players the chance to hit harder and with more spin. As the pros began to lash the ball with new levels of pace and shape, what was once a rectangle became a circle. It had become much harder to rush the net. Federer’s eight Wimbledon titles—five straight from 2003-07, as well as in 2009, 2012 and 2017—were won primarily from the baseline. The same goes for his dominance of the US Open, which he won from 2004 to 2008.

Among Federer’s most masterful efforts: In the 2004 US Open final, Federer faced an opponent he’d vied with since childhood, Lleyton Hewitt. At this stage in their rivalry, Hewitt had won seven of their 12 matches. But Federer didn’t just beat Hewitt, he obliterated him, vanquishing one of the game’s most tenacious competitors by the rarely seen score of 6-0, 7-6 (3), 6-0.

As if scripted, a natural foil emerged. In March 2004, less than two months after Federer first took over the No. 1 ranking, he was upset in the third round of the Miami Open by a 17-year-old Spaniard by the name of Rafael Nadal. Besides being fast and focused, Nadal owned one of the few shots that could deeply trouble Federer: a high-bouncing, left-handed crosscourt topspin forehand that jumped high to the Federer backhand. That precise sequence spelled frequent doom for the great Swiss, initially on clay, but also in the finals of Wimbledon in 2008 and the Australian Open the next year—a pair of five-set losses, the latter bringing Federer to tears.

By the time Federer lost that 2009 Australian Open final, he had won 13 majors. But he’d yet to win Roland Garros, having lost in the finals to Nadal three straight years. Much as Federer hoped he could earn that title by beating Nadal, events took a twist in 2009, when the powerful Swede Robin Soderling played the match of his life to beat Nadal in the round of 16.

The next day, Federer took on his good friend, Tommy Haas. Down two sets to love, Federer served at 3-4, 30-40—and struck a bold inside-out forehand that just clipped the line. From there, Federer was untouchable, winning 15 of the next 17 games to take the match, 6-7 (4), 5-7, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2. There followed three more wins, capped off by a straight setter over Soderling in the finals. The victory made Federer only the sixth man in tennis to have won the singles title at all four majors.

A month later, Federer regained his Wimbledon crown, taking down Andy Roddick in an epic, 16-14 in the fifth set, to earn a record 15th Grand Slam singles title, with Sampras in attendance.

Alongside Nadal, there also came another rival, a forceful and determined Serb. Federer won ten of his first 15 matches versus Novak Djokovic, including three straight at the US Open from 2007-09. But in the semis there a year later, Djokovic rallied from two match points down to beat Federer. The exact same thing happened 12 months later, a defeat made even worse given that Federer, in this case, served for the match at 5-3, 40-15.

Eight years later came one of the few defeats that will ever haunt Federer: in the 2019 Wimbledon final, Federer held a pair of championship points, serving at 8-7, 40-15. Once again, Djokovic rallied, eventually winning the match in a decisive tiebreaker.

Yet if those losses hurt Federer, which they surely did at least at some level, his subsequent actions revealed perhaps his most valued attribute: tranquility. Of all the men’s number ones of the last 50 years, none have been as serene wearing the crown as Federer. Bjorn Borg maintained calm on the court, but the pressures of competition eventually ate him alive. Sampras admitted how much he internalized his ambition. Jimmy Connors thrived on combat. John McEnroe conceded he was much happier as hunter than hunted. Andre Agassi felt more relieved than joyful.

With Federer, though, life at the top revolved less around angst than engagement: his sheer interest in the game itself; and in the constant refinement and enjoyment of all he could do with his racquet, both in the present and the future. Let others bristle or treat their spot at the pinnacle with a nervous kind of urgency. Federer never appeared rushed, possessed of a seemingly preternatural sense of time and place that aided him both inside and outside the lines. To see Federer at a tournament—be it at practice, in press conferences, with fans and sponsors—was to witness the most chilled-out big man on campus you could imagine.

The Swiss was tennis’ avatar, a dazzling representation of tennis’ possibilities. No one has ever left more people swooning about all this sport can be.

Perhaps that tranquility was the superpower that allowed Federer to calmly reinvent himself and make yet another push forward at the beginning of 2017. A knee injury suffered in the semifinals of Wimbledon 2016 proved the last match he’d play that year. Federer turned 35 that August. But over the course of his time off, Federer began to become more comfortable with a slightly bigger racquet (a change such greats as Connors and Sampras resisted) and also started to alter his backhand and the approach he took to deploying it.

That January, Federer arrived in Australia hoping to stay healthy, win a few matches and set the pace for a productive year. But soon, the seas parted. Formidable rivals in his path, Djokovic and Andy Murray, lost early. A slick court aided Federer’s aggression. Sharp wins over Tomas Berdych, Kei Nishikori and Stan Wawrinka put him in the finals versus Nadal. At this point, Nadal led their rivalry 23-11, including wins all three times they’d met in Melbourne. Federer by this stage had won 17 Grand Slams, Nadal 15.

In the fifth set, Nadal went ahead 3-1. But Federer remained committed to driving his backhand early and hard—and rattled off five straight games to win the title. Of all his triumphs, it would be hard to rank any more satisfying than this one—a grand comeback versus his toughest rival, on a big stage after being out of competition for six months.

So marked the beginning of a magical 2017 that saw Federer win seven titles, including runs at Indian Wells and Miami, each highlighted by straight-set wins over Nadal. And in July, Federer won his eighth Wimbledon singles title. Amazingly, he won it without the loss of a set, the first man to accomplish that feat since Bjorn Borg in 1976. By February 2018, shortly after successfully defending his Australian Open title, Federer regained the world No. 1 ranking for the first time in more than five years. At 36, he had become the oldest man in Open history to hold the top spot.

It was fun to have covered Federer from the start to the finish. I was in the press room following his Wimbledon win over Sampras and well recall his elation. In large part, over the next 20 years, that boyish enthusiasm and interest he had for connecting with people never vanished—seen once again quite vividly following that resurrection-like win in Melbourne in 2017. Attending a Federer press conference was rarely boring. While for a great many players, this rather stilted format created a rote-like series of query and response, with Federer, you could see his mind working to process the question and craft a thoughtful reply. That was yet another quality that made it easy to write about him.

But Federer’s racquet always spoke far more eloquently. On the Thursday afternoon before the start of Wimbledon 2018, I took my customary long flight from San Francisco to London. Per usual, it arrived early Friday morning. After tossing my bags into my Wimbledon Village flat, I walked down the hill to the All England Club. Normally, this is a day of fatiguing, highly administrative tasks.

Briefly, I glanced at Court 14, a backcourt just northwest of the iconic Centre Court, also located near the buildings where TV and print media work. There was Federer, practicing with fellow pro Jiri Vesely. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen people sitting in the small set of bleachers located to the west of the court, ten feet away from Federer. “The holder looks in good form,” said the man sitting to next to me. That happened to be Hall of Famer John Barrett, the former player, longstanding BBC commentator and All England Club historian.

As we watched Federer hit one shot after another for 30 minutes, Barrett intermittently compared Federer and other tennis titans—Sampras, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad, Pancho Gonzales. But after seeing one sublime sequence, Barrett also said this: “He’s simply, Roger Federer.”