Somewhere on a court and in a gym in Dubai at this time, Roger Federer – known to some simply as Maestro, to others as FedEx – is getting his 32-year-old body ready for the season ahead. It will be interesting to see how he emerges in the New Year in Australia after a year plagued by injuries and no further Grand Slams to add to his record haul, and yet a year which ended with the Swiss tennis player very much as number one when it came to his continued drawing power with the corporate bodies who massage his bank balance.
He is no longer the world number one in the official rankings, having dropped to sixth in a year just gone where a bad back was the primary root of his injury concerns, but Federer – winner of 17 Grand Slams – remains a living, walking ATM machine. As well as a sporting legend. And a philanthropist.
Earlier this year, Forbes magazine put his annual income (June 2012 to June 2013) at $71.5 million, of which $65.5 million came from endorsements from a collection of sponsors that include Nike, Moet & Chandon, Wilson, Rolex, Mercedes-Benz and Credit Suisse. And it was in a Q&A with the Financialist, the newsletter of Credit Suisse, that Federer this week honestly reflected on what he termed "a very difficult year".
For years, Federer, the greatest tennis player in the game’s history, had gone from court to court and continent to continent collecting an array of silverware in the Grand Slams. As Jimmy Connors once remarked,”in an era of specialists, you’re either a clay court specialist, a grass court specialist, or a hard court specialist . . . or you’re Roger Federer.”
Superhuman qualities
If he has had superhuman qualities for much of a golden career, this past season – as he told the Financialist – was difficult and different:
“It may have started well with the semi-final in Australia, and it ended well [reaching the semi-final of the World Tour Finals in London]. But it would be better to forget the months from March to October . . . . my back problems began at Indian Wells in March; after the match against Ivan Dodig. I shouldn’t have kept playing, the games against Stanislas Wawrinka and Rafael Nadal were too much.
“After that, I fell behind with my training and was unable to catch up again because my back problems soon returned. In the summer too, it would have been better to have given up in Hamburg and Gstaad. These problems cost me a lot of time and threw me off course.”
But when asked if he considered 2013 a “lost” year, he responded: “No year is lost. In the circumstances, it was actually an interesting season. It’s no joke being injured, of course. But I had to get through it. I had to question everything.
“Along with the back problems, I had other setbacks of a kind I had seldom had in the previous 10 years. But nonetheless it was an interesting experience, to see how different people reacted and how I dealt with this situation myself.”
One of the low points of Federer’s year was a second round defeat at Wimbledon to Sergiy Stakhovsky. He recalled, “I went to Wimbledon convinced that I could win the tournament for the eighth time. But it wasn’t a complete surprise for me [to lose]. Because I hadn’t played really well in Paris. Then Wimbledon was the start of the bigger problems . . . . defeats are part of tennis. What matters is how you react. What is also important for me is that I am honest with myself. I am the sort of person who often questions everything. I did the same when things were going really well for me. That’s why I am not affected much by criticism, which I don’t think is justified.”
And of the immediate future, that old Federer steel would appear to be back.
“I can see no reason why I shouldn’t play better again in 2014 and have some great wins. I have still got some major goals, because I certainly haven’t forgotten how to play tennis!”
