It may be from the family residence in Wollerau, a three-story glass house with large windows overlooking Lake Zurich, next to his wife Mirka Vavrinec and in the company of their children Myla, Leo, Charlene and Lennart, where for Images of those emotional, interminable and anguishing days at the O2 in London still run through Roger Federer’s head from time to time, in which the goodbye to his career was real and official.
Between the Swiss house and the penthouse of Le Reve in Dubai where he takes refuge from the cold and escapes the winter, the traces of that end-of-year party planned at the Laver Cup travel, twenty-four years after its professional premiere and after an excellent journey, full of hits produced in a spectacular way and with an admirable method to develop the game. A time.
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Roger Federer understood that the body was not enough. That he had no further journey in his journey to prolong the bid for success and extend the one-on-one with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic; that statistical, popular and also personal challenge for the considered the best in history.
The Swiss had been around for a long time, At the age of 41, he was on the sidelines of those glorious moments of the big tournaments. Four had passed since he managed to win his last Grand Slam, in Australia. The twentieth in his career.
Between nostalgia and calm, Federer recalls that afternoon that uncovered the emotional fragility that invades any human being. That one that he knew how to hide so many times on the field as soon as he settled at the top and after surviving the rebellion of youth. It was a special goodbye because fate ensured that the atmosphere matched the character. That’s how it went. Active, in the middle of the track at the London venue, next to his rival, friend and colleague Rafael Nadal, with whom he had shared so many epic episodes. Roger and Rafa lost to Americans Jack Sock and Frances Tiafoe and marked the end of an era in tennis.
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It was not an impromptu goodbye. Federer headed to the center of the track. The public delivered, Nadal excited. A video on the scoreboard summed up an eternal career, with 103 individual titles, with twenty Grand Slams.
The injuries, the operating room, an endless recovery, a tunnel with no exit and the passing of the years ended up convincing Roger of the need to step aside while a new generation after another begins to devour the circuit.to invade the tour where Rafael Nadal is still strong and Novak Djokovic also resists, survivors of the natural push, challenging the cycles of life.
Time stopped in 2022 for Federer just as it stagnated for the Argentine Juan Martín del Potro, the German Philipp Kohlschreiber, the American Sam Querrey, the Italian Andreas Seppi, the French Gilles Simon and Jo Wilfried Tsonga, the South African Kevin Anderson or the Spaniards Tommy Robredo and Marc López who also led the sports march to warn of the end of an unparalleled promotion in the history of tennis.
Djokovic and Nadal, even with a dominant character, tenacious in the face of the irruption of modern times interpreted by guys like the Russian Daniil Medvedev, the Norwegian Caper Ruud, the German Alexander Zverev, the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Canadian Felix Auger Aliassime, Italian Jannik Sinner or Danish Holger Rune. But specially, Carlos Alcaraz, installed at the end of the exercise at the top of the circuit from where he contemplates a splendid future.
He will never measure his Alcaraz tennis with that of Federer. It is one of the laments of the Murcian, a recognized admirer of the Swiss icon, who will never corner the experiences experienced throughout the year that has just ended.
The Spaniard erected as the youngest number one in the history of tennis has taken little time to reach the summit. This 19-year-old teenager is already part of the greats of the sport and has broken records that have always been established at every step. Alcaraz closed 2019 at number 492 in the ranking and a year later he reached December at 141. He broke into the top hundred in the world in May 2021, with just turned 18 and finished that season at 32 in the ranking. Twelve months later, he crowns the world rankings. Above all. Of the classics, of the legendary, of the consolidated and of the incipient ones.
Alcaraz achieved the desire in record time that is still pending for guys like Zverev, Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev or Matteo Berrettini, standard bearers of the intermediate generation designated to inherit the harvest of ‘Big Three’ and that they have not yet assaulted the summit.
Nadal closes the year without reproach, awaiting the dictates of his body for what is to come. The track will mark the future, even with incentives, clinging to the health and drive of the rookies. And of Djokovic, also eternal, who reacted to the bad times and the veto due to the consequences of the pandemic in the first section of the course but who warned of the pattern to follow with the victory at Wimbledon, twenty-one Grand Slam and a season finale. erupting.
