00:00We have seen many stars, but never one as bright as Roger Federer.
00:06We could look at the sky a thousand times, searching for a more beautiful one, but none will have the brilliance of the Swiss star.
00:13I'm not lying when I tell you that I had something different.
00:17Federer played a style of tennis that seemed to conserve energy, with a precise and difficult-to-read serve.
00:23a right hand that accelerated the ball without apparent violence,
00:27feet that always arrived an instant before and a distinctive one-handed backhand capable of cutting, blocking or
00:35attack.
00:36Roger always took the ball early and beat time itself.
00:41That was perhaps his greatest technical virtue: to do extraordinarily fast what took others a great deal of effort.
00:50He didn't hit the ball, he found it exactly where it was supposed to be.
00:55Numbers help us understand how great Federer was, but they can never explain it.
01:01He won 20 Grand Slams, conquered Wimbledon 8 times, more than any other man on clay.
01:09He won 6 Australian Open trophies and spent 310 weeks as world number one, 237 of them consecutively.
01:18However, their story was also written on the other side of the net.
01:22First there were Hewitt, Safin and Roddick, contemporaries whom he eventually surpassed.
01:28Then Rafael Nadal appeared, a fierce left-hander, perhaps the perfect antagonist for a man who seemed to play from the clouds.
01:36And when that rivalry seemed enough to define an era,
01:40Novak Djokovic arrived to push the limits of tennis even further.
01:46Federer had to face two different monsters and reinvent himself to survive both.
01:51Perhaps therein lies one of his greatest achievements.
01:54He was king of his generation, and he fought against the kings of the next.
01:58And even when he stopped ruling alone, he never ceased to be the owner of the throne.
02:04Federer's true legacy, however, may not lie in those battles,
02:10but in the way he chose to inhabit tennis.
02:13There was elegance in his strokes, of course, but also in his gestures, in the way he walked around the court,
02:20It's about recognizing the opponent, accepting defeat, and understanding that being the best
02:25It also meant being up to the task when you stopped being so.
02:29Federer made gentlemanly a part of his character without needing to appear distant.
02:35He could wear white at Wimbledon as if that stage had been built for him.
02:41and minutes later cry shamelessly in front of millions of people.
02:46It was classic without being old-fashioned, majestic without ceasing to be human.
02:50That's why he ended up representing something bigger than his titles.
02:54A certain idea of how a champion should look, feel, and behave.
03:00Nadal and Djokovic were able to challenge all his records.
03:03What they could never take away from him was that strange quality of seeming,
03:08For more than two decades, he was the very personification of tennis.
03:13That's why he was inducted into the tennis hall of fame a few days ago.
03:17And his words, his gestures, and the ceremony made us look back,
03:22towards the time when we were happy.
03:24When our parents turned on the television to watch the legend.
03:29And we too cried tears of joy at seeing something unique.
03:34Roger Federer's story has a redemption arc that few know about.
03:38And it was because of love.
03:40The day that changed his story was at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games,
03:44when he met Miroslava Mirka Babrinek,
03:47a Swiss tennis player three years older than him,
03:50which reached the top 80 in the world,
03:52and who would soon become his wife and life partner.
03:57She met a very different Federer.
04:00A 19-year-old prodigy still without ATP titles,
04:04who cried during the matches,
04:06He was shouting, losing concentration
04:08and he would throw his racket when things didn't go his way.
04:13Roger could do with the ball what almost nobody else could,
04:16But he still didn't know how to control himself.
04:19Mirka, much more disciplined in training,
04:21He taught him precisely that,
04:24that talent does not replace hard work,
04:27neither patience nor control.
04:29Then came his legacy as number one,
04:32thanks to a calm man who learned to win
04:34Without fanfare and to lose with dignity.
04:38Mirka didn't teach him that forehand or one-handed backhand,
04:41helped to convert the inner fire that could have consumed him
04:44in the calm that ultimately defined him.
04:47It's even nicer to hear it from him.
04:51Mirka inspires me every day.
05:21As you know, Mirka's my wife.
05:32Before the world wanted to play like Roger Federer,
05:36The future superstar wanted to play like the heroes he saw in Basel.
05:40He was barely three years old when he first picked up his father's heavy wooden racket
05:46and 13 when he was a ball boy in his native Switzerland,
05:51attached to the back wall,
05:53watching closely as the professional tennis players enjoyed their favorite game.
05:59Federer used to hit balls against the cupboards in his room at home,
06:03his grandparents' garage door and any wall that could return a ball to him.
06:09Long before Wimbledon, the Grand Slams, and the number one ranking,
06:14Federer was simply a boy in love with the feeling of playing.
06:18And like all children, he also had heroes.
06:21He would sit on the floor of his house to watch Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg
06:25to face each other time and time again in the Wimbledon finals.
06:29He admired Pete Sampras's serve and grew up watching names like
06:34Rod Leiber, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe.
06:37Martina Higgins, my compatriot and world number one at just 16 years old,
06:43He also showed her that tennis could be conquered from tiny Switzerland.
06:48Years later, Federer would share the court with Sampras,
06:53Edberg would be the coach
06:55and he would end up sitting alongside many of those legends in the tennis hall of fame.
07:02His list of achievements could have been even greater, but his body took its toll.
07:07And even more so when he was facing two rivals who seemed to refuse to grow old,
07:11like Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
07:14Against them he lost finals, records and territories that had once been exclusively his.
07:20Injuries eventually disrupted his consistency and ultimately his tennis career.
07:25but never their inheritance.
07:27To those who later wanted to play like him.
07:29To the children who tried his one-handed backhand because Federer made it look easy.
07:36Those who copied his serve, his forehand, that way of sliding towards the net.
07:40Federer taught a generation that competing didn't have to be separate from creating.
07:47That victory could be sought without sacrificing beauty.
07:51And that tennis remained, even under unbearable pressure, a game.
07:56That's why when he entered the hall of fame we all cried with him.
07:59And we were moved by the legend, by its love story.
08:03Because Federer's true love has been none other than tennis.
08:06Tennis and Mirka.
08:08What a privilege it was to share the choir.
08:39Because he stopped playing, but he never stopped being that child fascinated by a ball that went back and forth.
08:47Roger spent his life writing a love letter to tennis.
08:51And without intending to, he managed to make tennis end up resembling him a little.
09:07Thank you.
09:07Thank you.
09:07Thank you.
09:08Thank you.
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