Swiss superstar Roger Federer is considered to be the greatest player of all time. Great players like Rod Laver, Pete Sampras and Bjorn Borg have openly stated that the Swiss maestro is not just the finest player the sport has ever seen, but is the most talented tennis star ever as well.
However, the current World No. 2 recently disclosed that he was humiliated as a teenager when a tennis coach told him that he had no talent whatsoever to make it big in the game.
He said: “Today, everyone sees me as a quiet man, but my career began a little less quietly. There was a coach at my first tournament who told me: ‘At most, you can have coffee in a bar with those hands. You have no talent boy.’
“That guy made me grow in anger and changed my personality a bit. I got up at night to practice. I would put on the lights in the garden and hit against the wall hundreds of times. I hit forehands, backhands…every kind of shot until I could convince myself that each was perfect. I wanted to get there, but in front of me I saw too many obstacles and people who did not believe in me.”
Federer spoke about his spectacular 2017 season in which he won two Grand Slam titles, including an 8th Wimbledon crown and the Indian Wells, Miami and Shanghai Masters trophies and closed out the year with a 52-5 win-loss record. “It’s been an amazing year for me. (I’ve) been so happy that I was playing at this level from the beginning. Enjoyed myself in the process,” Federer said.
He also revealed that his off-season build-up for 2018 will be of a shorter duration than it was for 2017: “Clearly the build-up (to 2018) is not going to-be six months, like it was last time around. It’s not going to be six weeks of tennis. It’s going to be two, three weeks short. But I did that for 15 years previously, I know how to handle the build-up.”
Federer, a father of two sets of twins, said, “I’m looking forward to some time off now. I’ll probably take two weeks of vacation. It’s what we need at the end of the season, not just for myself, but for my wife and kids as well. We need to spend some family time together. We love that. (It’s the) most important time of our lives.”
