Just like an amateur tennis player’s feelings before playing the weekend tournament at the club of a lifetime.
Roger Federer loves the run-up to a tennis match: tying his laces, putting on his bandana, looking in the mirror and saying to himself, “Are you ready?”
The ritual is accompanied by those unpleasant knots in the stomach. A stress Federer has put himself through in his career for a quarter of a century, and one that while he loves, he says he’s glad he doesn’t have to follow again.
Eating breakfast with the night’s big match in mind, waiting all day, living those slow days to which the tennis player subjugates themselves. The Swiss remembers that routine also as a stressful situation. Waiting. Waiting a long time to go out and put on a show. Waiting, very tense, to do your job.
Federer will do it for the last time as a professional this Friday. In an exhibition, yes. Is a doubles match. But it will count in the official statistics (a Laver Cup’s achievement) and he will do it alongside his friend and greatest rival, Rafael Nadal.
