Roger Federer is the Shakespeare of tennis

It was the news we were supposed to be ‘dreading’: the confirmation that Roger Federer was finally hanging up his racket. But when I heard the announcement on Thursday, my feelings were more akin to pained relief. For a long time now, being a Federer fan has felt a bit like being in a relationship which remains officially ‘on’, but which in most meaningful senses has expired. Where once it was replenished by a steady stream of matches (virtually every week, a brand-new tournament, a new opportunity to revel in the powers of the man), it had long since become an expertise in retrospection, a matter of replaying (yet again) those YouTube videos of past glories: that triumph over Nadal in Australia in 2017; that wonder win over Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2011. Meanwhile, in the present, virtually nothing: just the occasional pic on social media of Roger in some anonymous gym, dutifully undertaking his latest round of rehab. Crumbs which helped foster a delusion that in retrospect seems a bit crazy – that Federer actually was, in his early forties, capable of sparking up the magic again.

No, all things considered, it’s for the best that this glimmer of hope has been quashed. But for its swansong at the Lever Cup next week, Federer’s career is past tense now; all that remains of it is our memories. And yet, what riches – what wonders – they contain. In an age where virtually all matches are filmed, and can be replayed by anyone with a computer, it seems to me that the measure of what constitutes true greatness is acquiring a new dimension.

Discussions of who is the ‘best’ out of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic – the ‘Big Three’ of men’s tennis – have often been framed purely in terms of statistical achievements: who has won the most grand slams, been Number 1 for longest etc. But with retirement, a new element is bound to come into play: how will these players be remembered five, ten, 50 years from now? Who will be watched most eagerly by the YouTube surfers of the future? Whose tennis will best ‘live on’?

Call it the Shakespeare test, if you will – one hugely facilitated by modern technology. And in this particular competition, I feel sure that it’s Federer who will come to seem most Bard-like, whereas Nadal and Djokovic will go down as the Websters and Marlowes of their day. Significant, certainly, sometimes touched by genius, but definitely not the main event. A century from now, will tennis fans really gaze in wonderment at Nadal and Djokovic’s 54-stroke rally in the final of the 2013 US Open? Will they eagerly ferret out that clip of Djokovic stretching, legs akimbo, to retrieve a backhand in the corner, or of Nadal pummelling an opponent with an endless stream of heavily top-spun forehands? I doubt it. But what they will surely do is continue to exult in what David Foster Wallace called ‘Federer moments’ – those passages of play that left spectators gasping and weeping at their sheer ridiculous audacity.

Federer may not be the ‘best’ tennis player of all time. But by a considerable distance, he is the one who came closest to embodying the ideal of how tennis should be played. By definition all great athletes are outliers, freaks – only with Federer this freakishness was somehow concealed, wrapped up in the silky folds of his play. He was a freak who didn’t look like a freak – who never lost the air, even when competing on the grandest of stages, that he had elegantly strolled onto the court for fun. Logic told us that such a player shouldn’t win; and of course, he didn’t always win, certainly not often enough to satisfy his fans. But as he said in his retirement statement, he achieved far more than he ever could have imagined – and for that we will always be grateful.