TENNIS:Swiss legend Roger Federer tells CHRISTOPHER CLAREYthe biggest reason for his durability and enduring appetite for top-flight tennis is his support team – above all his wife, Mirka
ROGER FEDERER’S back, a chronic but manageable concern for years, has been troubling him again. But he is in Melbourne for the Australian Open and playing in his 49th consecutive Grand Slam tournament.
The record, held by the former South African player Wayne Ferreira, is 56. But Federer is a serial record breaker and, now third on this list, just might break another one. In an era when major injuries have caused most of his rivals to eventually crack, he has kept the damage to a minimum with his silken footwork, sound stroke mechanics, sage scheduling and ability to respond quickly to the warning signs. The latest example: deciding to retire from a minor event last week in Qatar after the quarter-finals rather than imperil his ability to play in the main event this week in Australia.
But according to Federer, who will turn 31 this year and who ended 2011 on a reaffirming winning streak, the biggest reason for his durability and enduring appetite for top-flight tennis is his support team – above all his wife, Mirka. In that sense, Mirka has long been the most important woman in the men’s game. Born Miroslava Vavrinec in 1978 in what is now Slovakia, she immigrated to Switzerland with her parents as a toddler. The Swiss news media reported she received early encouragement from Martina Navratilova and became a professional tennis player, peaking at number 76 before a foot problem forced her to retire in 2002.
She and Federer have been together since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when he was a teenager with great potential but not yet a great résumé. Mirka later helped manage his career, travel and news media commitments, typing by his side on her smartphone as he gave interviews. She has ceded that role in recent years as Federer has expanded his staff and portfolio, but that does not mean she is outside the loop on scheduling, sponsorship, Federer’s clothing and product lines, and even some pure tennis issues, although she now rarely watches matches that do not involve her husband.
“She still plays a huge role and has great input and impact,” said Paul Annacone, one of Federer’s coaches. “She understands the big picture extremely well and does a great job in terms of letting us work, but also shares invaluable information. This is a tricky balance. She’s been there since day one, so she knows very well what it takes and how to get there.”
Since the birth of the Federers’ twin daughters in 2009, Mirka has taken her children (and a nanny) on the road, rarely missing a trip or tournament. Without that support, Federer said, he doubts he would still be interested in chasing down trophies worldwide from January to November.
“I know how fortunate I am,” he said. “And maybe that’s one of the reasons that makes me very happy when I’m playing and makes me very motivated, because I know this is not a normal situation I’m in, being able to play with a healthy, happy family next to me, because the easiest thing would be to say, ‘Let’s just stay home and take care of the kids’.
“But the kids are healthy, they are happy, and Mirka doesn’t want to be away from me, and I don’t want to be away from her,” he added, “and like this we make it all work that we are actually together all year long, and maybe miss the girls and Mirka maybe one or two weeks during the year, which is just incredible that she’s willing to make all of that effort. I’m happy that it’s this way, because anything else would make it more difficult to compete and to play at the highest levels. It would basically be impossible.”
Federer is hardly the first tennis star to travel with family in tow. Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt and Ivan Ljubicic are among those who juggled fatherhood and the nomadic life on tour. Kim Clijsters has won three Grand Slam singles titles as a mother. But at the moment, the only other father among the top 20 is number 12 Gilles Simon. What separates Federer from the crowd is that he already has secured his fortune and legacy – a record 16 Grand Slam singles titles – yet has shown no hint of losing his appetite for the game or the road.
But there is still a toll, and it is seldom the megastar who pays the highest price. “If your family travels with you, it’s harder on them than you,” said Mats Wilander, a former world number one. “As a player, you’re as selfish as anything, and as a supporting cast, you have to be the opposite.”
The difference perhaps is that Federer is an involved parent, willing to tolerate middle-of-the-night calls from the twins during tournaments. The bigger difference, perhaps, is that Mirka was once a player herself. “I think it’s a great help she actually played,” Federer said. “I never started dating a tennis player because of that, actually, sort of 10 years ahead. But in my situation, I think it really does help, because she knows in some ways what it takes, and she did it on a level that was still very good but not at my level.”
Mirka Federer rarely speaks publicly and declined to be interviewed for this article. But Federer said that her career-ending injury had shaped his approach to protecting himself with the help of his long-time fitness trainer, Pierre Paganini.
“She was a big believer in me not wasting any sort of talent because she knew herself that she was limited to a degree,” Federer said. “She was extremely hard-working, but she knew with my talents, I could achieve so many more things, and she was also one that was very influential, as was Pierre Paganini, for instance, early on, when I became world number one and we decided, ‘Less is more; we have to take care of the body’, because Mirka’s body went first because she maybe over-practiced.”
Last season was sour and ultimately sweet for Federer. He played some tremendous, flowing tennis, stopping Novak Djokovic’s 43-match winning streak in the French Open semi-finals, and yet slipped to number three and failed to win a Grand Slam title for the first time since 2002. He also blew a two-set lead in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and blew another two-set lead, against Djokovic, in the semi-finals of the US Open.
Federer said Mirka had told him during his six-week break later in the fall she thought he should search more deeply for explanations. “She was very much a believer that it can’t be that I lose all these matches so closely, that there must be something more,” Federer said. “She was the one that says: ‘It’s okay to lose one or two matches very closely, but you can’t start losing more and more and more. Then maybe something’s wrong in your corner. So you just have to question yourself and check with the entire team, see what everybody thinks.’ She had her opinions, and some were, I thought, wrong; some were right.”
Federer did not elaborate, but when he returned to the circuit, he won three straight indoor titles: at Basel, at Paris and at the ATP World Tour finals in London. That was sweet, but not as sweet as it would be to win in Melbourne. Triumph or disaster, Mirka will be there, which is a big reason the triumphs are still possible. “She’s been a rock in my corner,” he said.
New York TimesService
