The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer

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I thankfully received The Master as an ARC from NetGalley. This book by Christopher Clarey which was released to the public on August 24, 2021, delves into the life and career of Roger Federer from a child up to his current position in the tennis realm. As someone who got into tennis about a year ago, I thought I knew the history surrounding one of, if not the most, famous tennis players of all time. As a New York Times journo, Clarey has had incredible access to Federer over the years. But he's forever asking Federer insipid questions about his business interests and off-court matters. He never manages to elicit any fascinating insights about, you know, tennis. Which, when you consider how readily Federer goes full analytical tennis wonk, is quite an instinct for the dull that Clarey possesses. Christopher Clarey starts at the beginning with his childhood. I learned that Roger almost pursued another sport, but fate had something else planned for him. The author uses interviews with Roger along with interviews with those closest to him to pen a wonderful and elegant story about mastering a sport and life.

Clarey, being a journalist who had covered Roger since his grand debut in 1999 in the French Open, had many insights about Roger's game, personality and matches that were unknown to many. I feel everyone should take my review with a pinch of salt, because it's me reading a biography about someone I know most things about and have read a lot of interviews and watched a lot of pressers of. Titled The Roger Federer Effect, Rivals, Friends, Fans and How the Maestro Changed their Lives and published by Pitch, the book includes more than 40 exclusive interviews with players, coaches, rivals, fans, friends and people from outside tennis, including the world of music, film and even politics.Despite this book ostensibly being written about "the last days of Roger Federer", Dyer doesn't write especially well (or often) about Federer. I'm pretty sure Dyer wanted to write about how how bummed he is that he's getting too old to play tennis, but he knows no one cares about the athletic decline of a 62 year old author who plays tennis for fun, so he talks about Federer every now and then to keep your interest. But “The Last Days of Roger Federer” weds this erudite treatment of “lateness” with the author’s own personal, far less theoretical approach to it. (“This book must not be allowed to become an injury diary or sprain journal,” he admonishes himself at one point.) The obverse of art for Dyer is tennis. “Playing tennis is such a big part of my happiness,” he writes. “Let’s say I play twice a week for a maximum of two hours per session. That’s only 4 out of 112 waking hours but as a percentage of my weekly allotment of well-being it’s way in excess of that figure, even when offset by the number of hours— 16? 20? — spent feeling wrung out and utterly depleted afterwards. The glow of those four hours suffuses the whole week.” Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky, interviewed before he headed home to defend his country against Russia’s invasion, famously beat Federer at Wimbledon, but also explains how the Swiss was so integral to getting huge prize-money rises for players at Grand Slams. Wrestler Urs Bürgler explains the role he played in bringing Federer together with Mirka Vavrinec, the woman who played such a massive role in his career, and we meet the man who beat Federer the first eight times they played. From goofy teenager to “James Bond” By interviewing people in Roger’s life (friends, peers / rivals, coaches, fans, journalists, celebrities/personalities etc.), this book provides stories from every interviewee’s perspective, how they view Roger as a person and as a professional tennis player, how Roger impacts their life one way or the other. The remarkable thing is that both Robbie and Lynette are very short. Neither is more than 1.7m (5ft 7in), and for a while it was feared that any offspring of theirs couldn’t possibly grow tall enough to become a force on the tennis circuit. Yet, out of some genetic inheritance, Roger Federer has grown to 1.85m (6ft 1in)."

Unlike Rafael Nadal, he hasn’t yet written an autobiography. His wife, Mirka, as you note in The Master, doesn’t speak to the press, and Federer himself generally keeps his private life private. There’s also something about his game, and where it came from, that eludes our customary explanations for sporting genius. Federer’s parents weren’t professional athletes; Switzerland has little history of producing great men’s players; he isn’t a tortured artist, like, say, John McEnroe; and he didn’t have to fight his way out of difficult circumstances. I loved to read about RF and his tennis and his career. I now believe he could have been greater player and even greater achiever . The book has many moments that reader will cherish . As tennis expanded, coaching and players improved,media exposure increased along with rewards. All of this means that high achievement in sports requires a huge set of additional skills, none of which Federal had any prior experience. This is not discussed.As I wrote earlier, I think, every athlete should be given the opportunity of getting the vaccine and be free from every restrictions, bubbles a.s.o. Who prefers to get infected and have the same freedom, should be given an opportunity to get infected (under medical control). Others must so far go via bubbles. Maybe another nonsense, but still some different possibilities to choose from. It is touching at times, funny at times, but these little gems are very well hidden in the overwhelming pile of random text about absolutely everything. A self-indulgent memoir/reflection on endings: of great artists and performers, and of life more broadly. The pomposity of Dyer's prose can be equal parts unbearable and unbelievably profound depending on the subject he's discussing.

Lynette is convinced that what got Roger through those first five months was the fact that he had made his own decision to go to Ecublens and hadn’t been pressured into it by his parents. ‘He had made the decision himself,’ says the mother who spent about an hour a night on the phone to her son in those early months, ‘and only became aware later of all the things that the decision brought with it. But because he wanted it himself, he was willing to battle through.’" Federer’s impact on the court is well-documented. The 41-year-old, who retired last month after the Laver Cup, has won 20 Grand Slam titles, 103 titles worldwide, the Davis Cup and Olympic gold medal in doubles. The parts of this I enjoyed the most had to do with Dyer's own personal adventures and misadventures, whether his long-running mission to never pay for shampoo again or his frustrated attempt to complete "A Dance to the Music of Time." Even when I didn't completely relate to the enthusiasm Dyer shows to things like jazz, I always enjoyed the writing. And when Dyer turned his attention to people and things I am enthusiastic about — films, novels, Christopher Hitchens, Federer, etc — I was enthralled.I guess I've never read Geoff Dyer before (seems unlikely but I can't find any evidence on the internet that I've done so...) so am unsure if he *always* spends so much time talking about dudes like Beethoven, Nietzsche, Larkin, Turner, and Longfellow but oh man did my thoughts wander during these parts, of which there are many, in The Last Days of Roger Federer, which consists of a long series of ruminations on the concepts of final works, careers ends, and dying days of, mostly, artists, writers, musicians, and athletes.

I am mostly a passive observer of things that happen in the sports world and would get excited over certain games occasionally. But , I do get obsessed with sports personalities sometimes. Then I would venture to learn more about the player and the sport he/she/they play. While perceptions and coverage of his game often use words like ‘effortless’, Clarey goes to great lengths to demonstrate exactly how much effort has gone into building the superstar athlete that is RF - behind the polished ease lies a ton of grit I am a huge tennis fan and one of the most exciting players for me to watch is Roger Federer. This biography allows tennis fans like myself to get to know more about Roger's journey to becoming one of the greats.While reading, I often found myself rewatching highlights of those epic matches like Wimbledon 2008/2009 and Australian Open 2017 on YouTube.