Roger Federer declared that the main reasons for his success were “courage” and hard work, while rejecting the theory that his tennis game was “easy”.
Federer, one of the sport’s greatest achievers, sought to set the record straight when giving a commencement speech at Dartmouth College in the United States.
The Swiss exchanged the shorts he wore “almost every day for the last 35 years” for a robe that was “difficult to wear”, as he said when receiving the title of Doctor of Humane Letters from the New Hampshire institution.
The 20-time Grand Slam winner, who hung up his professional racket in 2022, spoke about how “horrible” he finds the word “retired”.
He said he instead “graduated from tennis” and, like those he was talking to, “finished one big thing” and was “moving on to the next one.”
The 42-year-old then gave three “tennis lessons” that he “relied on during this transition,” which he identified as:
Federer won Wimbledon eight times and was known for the stylish and elegant nature of his game.
“People would say my game was easy. Most of the time, they took it as a compliment,” he said at Sunday’s ceremony. “But it used to frustrate me when they would say, ‘He’s barely broken a sweat’ or ‘Is he even trying?’.
“The truth is that I had to work hard to make everything seem easy.
“I didn’t get to where I am on pure talent alone. I got there by trying to outdo my opponents.
“Most of the time, it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having courage.”
‘You want to become a master at overcoming difficult times’
In the second lesson about being “just a point”, Federer explained that it was possible to “work harder than you thought possible and still lose”, as he did, since “tennis is brutal”.
He referenced his famous five-set defeat to Rafael Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final and commented that “in tennis, perfection is impossible”, having won 80% of his 1,526 singles matches.
“When you miss every second point, on average, you learn not to think about every shot,” Federer said.
“When you’re playing a point, it’s the most important thing in the world.
“But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next one after that with intensity, clarity, and focus.
“You want to become a master at overcoming difficult times. That to me is the sign of a champion.”
When talking about his third lesson that “life is bigger than the court”, Federer said from the beginning of his career he saw how “tennis could show me the world, but tennis could never be the world”.
He added, “I’m here to tell you, on the other side of graduation, that leaving behind a familiar world and finding new ones is incredibly, profoundly, wonderfully exciting.”
