Roger Federer, a genius who made tennis look effortless and a genius who made people want to be tennis players, died on Tuesday in London, according to the website of his company, Endeavor, where he was chairman. The cause was complications from blood clots. He was 79 years old.
The cause of his death was complications of blood clots, his company said.
We lost an icon of a certain kind of male tennis lover.
What an extraordinary life and, on a side note, an amazing body of work.
It’s a little premature to really wrap his life up at this stage in the game. I’m not sure anyone’s going to have him here to play for one more Grand Slam.
In a way, I suppose, he has already been crowned a winner. He’s been there, done that.
What I’m trying to say is that we might have lost another hero of a certain kind of male tennis lover.
And if that’s the case, I’m sorry to hear it. I’m sorry that his body was forced to yield to the inevitable by those who didn’t know the true definition of endurance. He lived a life of pure, epic, over-the-top endurance.
But he lived a life that people could never take for granted, because of the fact that something inside of him was just fundamentally different from other players.
I think most of us probably thought he was good enough to have won at Wimbledon and have become a dominant player.
I think everybody that watched him that summer probably thought he was the best tennis player they had witnessed in ages.
And it was probably true. He was never great in an era of extraordinary greatness, but he was consistently good in a time when everyone was really trying.
When he played, and I was there to watch it many times, it was like he was playing with the best in the world. There were other players who weren’t as good who were trying to have a go, and he was trying to have a go.
When I saw him play, I thought, oh my god, this man is playing with the best.
So he was exceptional on paper.
He had something nobody else did.
He did
