INTERVIEW: Roger Federer on his Australian Open success, his role in the sport and the future of tennis - UAE - Tennis | Sport360
"Sometime in the future, Federer will be on the outside, watching tennis like the rest of the world. Is the sport heading in a direction he is pleased with?"Does the responsibility every weigh down on him?
“No, not really to be honest. I understand I have a role to play in the whole tennis world. But at the end of the day tennis is bigger than any tennis player,” he insists.
“That’s why even if there is a new generation, new players, tennis will be fine. We have too many highlights during the year. There will always be a future No1, there will be new major champions, the wheel keeps turning.
“There will be some adjustment to be done if Rafa retires, or I retire, or Novak retires, or whoever any… Sampras and Agassi when they retired, it was different, they left a bit of a void. And that’s normal. But at the end of the day it’s also an opportunity for others.
“And I think it’s important for the organisation, the ATP, and everybody else to also look ahead, ‘what if these guys are not around anymore?’ I know they’ve been talking about that for years. They are embracing the next generation, which I think is super-exciting, there’s a lot of great players there.
“But at the same time how do we maintain to keep the older guys like myself and Rafa and everybody longer in the game.
“I think it’s really important too not to force sort of a playing rhythm upon them where they have to play so much that they get tired of it. So I think we found a good middle ground.
“But honestly I don’t feel a huge responsibility but I understand that I have probably an important role to play.”
Further points he made: Roger Federer Q&A: I hope Tiger Woods can get back in the swing | The National“I think we’ve grown overall, if you think about the stadiums, the tournaments have got more and more professional. The Challengers are growing – I still think we could do more there,” he responds.
“We definitely need to clear issues such as the gambling issue. I think it’s real and there’s a report coming out in March now which I’m interested to see what’s coming out there. But I think actually tennis overall is doing quite well.
“I do believe – one thing is that I would like that the players keep up the pace of playing in between points. It’s just because that’s when I catch myself watching a tennis match and if somebody takes too much time between points, and you hit a let serve and you take the same time again to hit that first serve, when it becomes every shot becomes that important you have to take so much time just to get ready, I lose a little bit of interest.
“I would like just that the players recognise they’re not only playing for themselves but for the fans, so it is nice to keep up the good tempo of the point. That’s my only concern.
“Other than that I think tennis will always be super-exciting. Honestly we’re doing really well and I think it’s going to be great in also in 10, 20, 50 years from now.”
What does it mean for the sport of tennis that the two Australian Open champions are 35 years old?
"I think it maybe shows that we keep ourselves in good shape. I think that the players like to play for a long time because I am not the only guy who is 35 and still playing. They actually have a bunch of guys who are doing it on the women’s tour also.
"I think there’s more players now playing longer. They are not retiring anymore at 24, 26, like we have seen that happen often. It shows that maybe the tennis world is a good place. You can stay happy and have a life besides the tennis life, which I think is important.
"Maybe on the men’s tour we have seen a bit of a struggle after the Novak and the Murray generation for a really huge group of players to rush through like maybe my generation was and the Rafa generation was. That also definitely hasn’t pushed out enough of the 35 year olds today. That’s definitely also made it easier to hang on potentially. But nevertheless, I think those generations are very, very strong.
"And conditions didn’t change so much in the last 10 years. So that’s why probably it’s also easier just to have perfected that way of playing. I thought there was more changes from 15 to 20 years ago, to then 10 years ago. The last 10 years have been pretty much the same.
What about the technology?
"Yeah, technology. Now everything … the big change for me came in 2002 when I changed strings to the half-and-half. And then you had court speeds slow down. So I feel like the last 10 to 13 years now have been pretty much the same in terms of the technology of the strings, balls, surface — it all seems pretty much the same. It’s easier maybe to just keep on going. I am not sure."