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Historical archive. Facts and results reflect the period recorded.
Records are meant to be broken. Roger Federer from Basel has now spent almost 20 years as a professional tennis player, and at an age when most top athletes are retired, he is still adding a little more.
He has won the first 16 matches of this year. The 36-year-old father of four has thereby equalled his own 2006 record. He achieved this success through hard training, doing an additional 10 hours of strength and endurance work every week to stay fit as he ages. His routine has been recorded and monitored in detail for years; nowadays it is wearable devices such as Fitbit and similar products even easier to document the results so that they can continually be improved.
He lost to Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro in his 17th match at Indian Wells, but for the time being he remained number one in the world rankings. Millions of fans worldwide and bookmakers hold the same view, rating him a favourite almost continuously apart from a few years.
Federer discovered tennis at the age of three, and at the age of eight he joined the tennis club TC Old Boys. He also played football on the side with considerable success until, as a twelve-year-old, he decided to devote himself entirely to tennis. Between 1995 and 1997 alone he won seven Swiss junior championship titles.
His international breakthrough on the junior circuit came soon after he left school at 16 to pursue a tennis career. After an initial success at the Australian Open, where he reached the semi-finals in 1998, and junior singles and doubles titles at Wimbledon, he finished the year ranked number one. His move into the professional game was therefore secured.
The rest is tennis history. Alone 20 Grand-Slam-Titel Federer, regarded as the most versatile player in modern tennis, has won in the men’s singles – four more than his long-time rival Rafael Nadal. He has reached 30 finals. He is the only player to win three Grand Slam titles in one season (2004, 2006 and 2007), and the only player to reach at least five finals at each of the four Grand Slam tournaments.
He is also unchallenged at the top with his time as Nummer Eins der World rankings. 308 weeks so far. That is almost six years, including 237 consecutive weeks.
Roger, the tennis king, struggles only on clay, where Rafael Nadal outshines him. Federer is still considering whether to play this year’s French Open on clay. He has already cancelled his participation in Monte Carlo.
The small principality on the Riviera loves him nevertheless. At the Laurens Sports Awards in Monaco, Federer has just been named World Sportsman of the Year – for the fifth time. This makes him not only the oldest title-holder, but also the most successful. Until then he had shared the record with the runner Usain Bolt.
He also received another title in Monaco. Tennis legend Boris Becker presented him with the trophy for the Comeback des Jahres.
Despite all the training and the tournaments, Federer still finds time as a football fan to cheer on FC Basel and the Swiss national team. Federer also became involved in charitable work at an early stage. In 2003 he founded a foundation that provides financial support for aid projects for children, and after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Indian Ocean at Christmas 2004 he took part in aid projects for the victims. In 2006 he became the first Swiss person to be appointed an international UNICEF ambassador. He is always right at the front, and not only in tennis.