This article is taken from the November 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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They say nobody is perfect, but have they ever considered the life and career of Roger Federer?

Before retiring from the game this summer, Federer played 1,526 professional tennis matches and won 1,251 of them. He won 103 ATP singles titles and 20 Grand Slam singles titles. He won Olympic gold at the Beijing Olympics. He was the official World Number One for a total of 310 weeks, 237 of which were consecutive. In prize money alone, he has earned an incredible $130,594,339.

Federer played with a style and a grace that we admire and that feels such a contrast to what we see in so much of modern sport

He could, as he implied in his speech that followed his final match, have stopped playing a long time ago. He had won everything he could, in most cases several times over. He had earned a fortune. He had a wife and children, who could at any point have grown tired of the sacrifices required of an elite sportsman: the travel, the absences, the discipline of training, the tedium of the requirements of a strict dietary regime.

But on he went, playing until the age of 41. The hunger, drive and sheer joy he found in playing his sport meant Federer overcame the aches and pains and gradual physical decline to keep winning. In 2017, after recovering from knee surgery, he won the Australian Open, and then titles at Indian Wells, Miami and Wimbledon.

When Federer regained World Number One status in 2018, he was just short of his thirty-eighth birthday, making him the oldest player to hold the ranking. Inevitably, and joyously, he successfully defended his title in Australia that year.

And yet the stats and the titles only tell us so much. After all, if numbers told the full story, it might be possible to argue that Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are the greater players. For when it comes to majors, both men beat Federer’s 20 titles: Djokovic has 21 and Nadal 22.

Paradoxically, the fact that it was occasionally possible to beat Federer adds to the allure. Tennis can sometimes suffer from the total domination of a particular player, and also from power players who are able to simply outmuscle their rivals, especially on grass courts. Along with Djokovic and Nadal, Federer was part of what might reasonably be called the greatest generation of players. Often he beat them, sometimes he lost. And when he lost, it was often the most beautiful aspects of his game — such as the one-handed back-hand exploited ruthlessly, on occasion, by Nadal — that caused him trouble.

For it is not just trophies and success that mark out Federer, but grace, personality and charm. The playing style was, so many of us imagined, like a throwback to a different era, although the truth of the matter — as with so many other sports imagine, as old television footage attests.

What we really mean is Federer played with a style and a grace that we admire and that feels such a contrast to what we see in so much of modern sport. He was a champion, but his appeal was also deeply aesthetic. Even in moments of rare defeat, he was gracious and generous to his opponents.

Off the court, he is much the same. Married to Mirka, the couple have two sets of twins: girls born in 2009 and boys born in 2014. His charitable foundation helps impoverished children in southern Africa. He speaks Swiss German, High German, English and French fluently, and Italian, Spanish, Swedish and even Afrikaans too.

He has his own clothes range, and men’s magazines like GQ produce regular features on his style. If men want to be Roger, as the phrase goes, and women want to be with him, there is no sign that his ego has grown in proportion to such popularity, fame and wealth.

He was not always so clean-cut, of course. On occasion he has been known to mutter and curse on court, and even answer back to umpires and line judges. Under pressure he once told Novak Djokovic’s parents — sitting among the spectators — to be quiet as they watched a match. But these were mild offences, certainly compared to the conduct of Djokovic in particular.

There is no sign that his ego has grown in proportion to such popularity, fame and wealth

Much earlier in his career, as a young player, he could smash his racquet in frustration. “We were never angry if he lost a match,” his father, Robert, once said, “but we were angry with his behaviour after matches. He was horrible sometimes. Throwing racquets, swearing on the court — sometimes we felt a bit ashamed.”

But this was many years ago, and this comment by his father is revealing. He was not content only to speak about the pride he feels in his son’s many achievements, he was also honest about the moments where his son had failed to live up to his expectations of honour and good manners. Perhaps the high standards of his parents — the unfashionable politeness and reserve of the Swiss middle class — were what made Federer the man he is today.

And what a man he is. As he played for the last time in London at the Laver Cup in September — a doubles match in which, appropriately enough, Nadal was his partner — Federer addressed his fans attending the event and those watching, all around the world. As he did so, he cried, Nadal cried, and many millions more joined them. They knew they had witnessed greatness — and the ultimate sporting gentleman.