Roger Federer: A Journey of Tears and Triumph in Tennis

Roger Federer has cried at some of the biggest moments of his career. The first time, he didn’t even understand why.

It was Wimbledon, 2001. Centre Court. His debut on the sport’s most sacred stage and, across the net, Pete Sampras – the man who owned that lawn, the hero of his youth. Federer dropped to his knees after the win, then walked to the net to shake Sampras’ hand.

“I go to my knees, (then) I shake hands with Pete and he's my hero … and these emotions came all over me,” he told CNN Sports. “And I was like, 'What is going on?' This is not who I am normally."

From that afternoon against Sampras to his tear-streaked farewell in 2022, Federer built one of the defining careers in tennis history and, almost by accident, became the sport’s most famous crier. The tears never felt like theatre. They were the release valve of a life lived at the very top.

This weekend, in Newport, Rhode Island, the emotions are likely to return. The Swiss great is being inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and he knows exactly where the lump in the throat will come from.

"If I'm speaking about the game and all the gratitude that I have, and having my entire family there – from my parents to my wife to my four children and my whole team from coaching staff and physios, etc. I think it could hit home very hard," he said in the hours before his big moment.

"If it happens, it will be more memorable for me personally, but I hope I get through the speech without too many hiccups. We'll see."

For his global fanbase, this feels overdue. His place in Newport has felt inevitable for two decades, ever since 2004, when he seized three of the four grand slam singles titles and climbed to world No. 1. Once there, he refused to move. Federer stayed on top for 237 consecutive weeks, a stretch of dominance that still stands as a record.

The numbers from that era remain staggering. In 2005, he won more than 95% of his matches. Then came 2006, the season many regard as his absolute peak: three more major titles, 12 trophies in all, and a 92-5 win–loss record. A 94.8% win rate, sustained across an entire year at the sharpest end of the sport.

Sampras’ 14 grand slam titles once looked untouchable. Federer passed that mark on the very grass Sampras once ruled, at Wimbledon in 2009, and kept going. He finished with 20 majors, a benchmark that would later be pushed higher by Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, but for many, Federer’s supremacy was always about more than the count.

He glided where others ground. He floated where others fought. On court, his game seemed to defy effort – the easy power, the liquid movement, the strokes that looked like sketches from an artist’s hand rather than the product of a lifetime’s grind.

Federer knows that image sometimes worked against him.

"It looked like I wasn't actually hitting the ball so hard," he recalled of how people viewed him as a junior. "But it was kind of flying off of my racket with a lot of power. People always thought, like, 'It's so simple for you,' because it looked like elastic. But it wasn't the case. There was a lot of work and effort put into it.

"When I would lose, they say, 'Why don't you try harder?' And when you win, they would say, 'Oh my God, it's so easy for you!'"

Buried in that contradiction is a clue to all those tears. The effortless genius was anything but.

"The sacrifice was massive and I was holding a lot of pressure in."

He has let that pressure go. There is no trace of an ex-champion searching for a missing piece, no hint of a man trying to recreate the roar of a Centre Court crowd.

"It doesn't sound like he misses it all that much," the piece around him suggests, and his own words back that up. "I'm actually really happy going through everyday life at a lower pace," he said.

That “lower pace” is relative. Federer is a father of four, a philanthropist, an investor, a businessman. His schedule still moves, just differently. The travel bug never left.

"I've always been a guy who loves being on the road."

Newport gives him a chance to look back, to revisit the memories that shaped his legend and to place himself, officially, among the game’s immortals. It has also stirred his imagination. If the Tennis gods granted him one more fantasy, he knows exactly who he’d want across the net.

"I would have a little list," he said, before reeling off the names: Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker and, of course, Sampras again. "I think these would be my favorite players to play against. I've always admired their personalities, what they have achieved, and what they represent in the game."

His once-record 20 majors may have been overtaken by Nadal and Djokovic, but the argument about the greatest of all time will never be settled by arithmetic alone. Federer’s supporters point to the way he did it – the aesthetics, the grace, the sense that he had mastered not just how to win, but how to make winning beautiful.

Asked what he considers himself good at now, away from the lines and the baseline duels, he sounded like a man leaning into a second life rather than clinging to the first.

"I'm trying to get better at golf," he said. "I would love to start with an instrument again. I used to play the piano, so when I have more time, I'd like to dive into that because my four children and my wife play the piano.

"I hope I'm a good listener and a good decision-maker. Hopefully I'm a guy who people enjoy being around. I'm a big family guy. I love being surrounded by my friends – that's really the priority in my life."

In Newport, the Hall of Fame will etch his achievements into tennis history. The rest – the tears, the artistry, the way he made a brutal sport look like a dance – already lives where it matters most, in the memories of those who watched him and still wonder how something so hard could look so impossibly easy.