INTRODUCTION

Watching Roger Federer turns every tennis spectator into an art, theatre or ballet critic: in the face of such artistry and elegance, you find the sport’s regular vocabulary is lacking, wholly inadequate. Just as Federer has been reinventing tennis, including playing technicolour shots that the sport had never seen before, so a new word has been required to describe his genius: Federesque.

It’s an adjective you might use to discuss a shot, a moment, or perhaps an entire performance–while others play matches, Federer has performances -but it’s also so much more than that. You immediately recognise something’s Federesque when you see it. When Federer plays an impossibly gorgeous groundstroke, floats just above the court, or bamboozles an opponent with an outrageous piece of skill that makes you wonder whether you’re watching a tennis video game, that’s Federesque. Quite simply, it’s something that Federer can do that no one else can even conceive of, let alone execute.

Federesque can be applied to more than just forehands and backhands; it’s also handy when considering what he has accomplished in 20 years of elite tennis. Who else could have dominated the sport in such style? Who else in their mid-thirties could have surged back to the top of the sport, becoming number one again for the first time in years? Which other man has won 20 Grand Slam titles or spent so many weeks as number one? No one else, which is what makes those achievements, and many others, so Federesque.

On top of that, it’s also the way he carries himself, on and offthe court. In many ways, this tennis immortal, this little boy from Basel who became a sporting and cultural phenomenon, seems so difficult to define, almost a paradox in a headband-so Swiss, yet also a citizen of the world, so poised and classy, yet such an unstoppable force, such a competitor, yet celebrated for his humility and sportsmanship, and at once incredibly emotional and yet seemingly in total control of his feelings. Roger Federer: simply Federesque.

Every tennis champion has some assistance along the way, and Federer is no different. Over the years, Federer has been greatly helped by his physical trainer Pierre Paganini, and by a number of coaches, with his 2017-18 resurgence guided by Severin Luthi and Ivan Ljubicic, but tennis is an individual sport and Federer a singular talent. Those members of his entourage have simply allowed Federer to express his talent, vision and imagination, and to continue to feel such love for the game of tennis.

Spooling back through Federer’s tennis life-from his 2018 return to number one, back to his ATP debut in 1998, and then to his first swings of the racket as a boy in Basel-there are words that keep coming up. Emotion. Artistry. Humility. Immortality. Perfection. Elegance. You could distill them into just one: Federesque.

Mark Hodgkinson