Roger Federer may have 20 Grand Slam titles, and is closing in on a record of potentially being the oldest No.1 in history. However, that doesn’t seem enough for Swiss politicians in the Swiss great’s hometown of Basel.
Fans had been hoping that the St Jakobshalle, the arena that plays host to the city’s ATP 500 event would be renamed in Federer’s honour. That idea will not now come to fruition. Government officials in Basel are instead hoping to raise funds to help the arena break even. There are concerns that the tournament is not doing so. Local football clubs have done well with sponsorship deals for stadium naming rights and officials hope the arena could do the same.
Federer has shown a great love of the Basel event over the years, playing almost every year except 2016, when he was forced to miss the rest of the year after Wimbledon with injury. Federer has won the event eight times, and is the current defending champion after defeating Juan Martin del Potro in last year’s final.
Federer, who once worked as a ball boy at the event, buys pizza for the ball boys and girls in a tradition invoked when he first won the title. The Basel event takes place near the end of the tennis season, in October shortly before the Paris-Bercy Masters and the ATP Finals.
Even ideas for a street to be named after Federer have been cancelled. Federer’s close friend and rival Rafael Nadal has a street named after him in Valladolid, Spain.
