“It’s easier to come back when you have such good technique, and there’s not really anything to go wrong.” “Playing doubles is more difficult than singles, because you don’t always get into a rhythm, but he’s done very well,” said Martina Navratilova, the tennis great who retired at 49 as a doubles specialist and was calling the farewell match for Tennis Channel. And though he mistimed a groundstroke or two and looked uncharacteristically slow off the mark when it came time to sprint for a short ball, he certainly gave the public quite a bit of what they paid from far and wide for. The first ball he struck in the match was a winner: a reflex forehand volley. A ceremonial adieu on Friday night against the Team World doubles team of Sock and Tiafoe would have been understandable, but Federer managed rather more than that. Unable to fully recover from his latest knee surgery, he said he was uncertain even a few weeks ago that he would be able to play at all. The tennis turned out to be diverting, too, which was no guarantee considering that Federer had not played a public match of any kind in the nearly 15 months since he slumped out of Wimbledon in 2021 with a straight-set defeat in the quarterfinals to Hubert Hurkacz, which included a 6-0 final set. 1,” to the extended, tender embrace between Federer and Lüthi shortly before Federer took the court. Mirka Federer, like Federer’s fitness trainer Pierre Paganini, has been instrumental in Federer pushing the boundaries of enduring tennis excellence and playing, like Serena Williams, another departing megastar, across four decades.īut the strong emotions on Friday were not restricted to the grand setting and the fanfare, to the series of standing ovations and Federer banners that read, “Forever our No. “She could have stopped me a long time ago, but she didn’t,” Federer said of Mirka, a former tour player whom he has long called “my rock.” 1 Stefan Edberg to his current coaches Severin Lüthi and Ivan Ljubicic. The gallery in London included his wife, Mirka, and four children and his parents, Robert and Lynette, as well as members past and present of his support team: from former No. It’s exactly what I wanted at the end, exactly what I hoped for,” he said, wiping tears away in his post-match interview with the crowd applauding him supportively to help him through it. Instead, he chose to play doubles with Nadal, settling on the opening night of this three-day event to avoid stealing too much thunder from the Laver Cup’s homestretch. He could have tried one more singles match. “I always felt I was a team player at heart.”Ĭredit. “I didn’t want it to feel lonely out there,” Federer said. ![]() With a suspect right knee, he could have ended his great career in many a manner and many a venue, but he chose to emphasize the collective: forgoing an individual tour event like Wimbledon or his home city stop in Basel, Switzerland, and opting instead for this team event partly of his own creation. “It’s been a wonderful day,” Federer said. “When Roger leaves the tour, an important part of my life is leaving, too.”īut Federer made it clear that he had received what he had hoped for on Friday, even in defeat. “A lot of years, sharing a lot of things together,” Nadal said. ![]() What underscored the special circumstances on Friday were the emotions that others were feeling: the thousands in the arena, including Federer’s family and friends, and perhaps most poignantly, Nadal, a much less lachrymose champion who appeared every bit as inconsolable as his friend and doubles partner as the tears streamed down his face. The tone, as so often with Federer, seemed just right, and there were of course tears when it was over from a champion who has so often given free rein to his emotions - in victory or defeat - after keeping them tightly under wraps with the ball in play. #LaverCup /CQrAVfr7cu- Tennis Channel September 23, 2022 ![]() His Final Bow! □ plays the final match of his career with Nadal and fought hard, but ultimately Team World wins, 4-6, 7-6, 11-9.
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