How many more Australian Opens will the graceful Roger Federer compete at?richardfisher

In the post-match interview after his career-ending defeat in the second round of this year’s Australian Open, two-time Grand Slam champion and former world No.1 Lleyton Hewitt remarked: “I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve had such a great career that I had the opportunity to go out on my terms. A lot of great sporting athletes don’t have that opportunity.” Indeed, reflecting on the 34-year-old’s final professional tennis tournament, it would appear to have been the perfect send-off for one of the sport’s greats. For the Australian was able to bow out of the game to raucous applause from his home fans with his head held high after simply being ground down 6-2 6-4 6-4 after battling against both injury and the wiles of world No.8 David Ferrer. Although he failed to wind back the clock by putting together a string of victories at his closing tournament, Hewitt’s swansong cannot but be deemed a success since he finished his career at the atmospheric Rod Laver Arena in a tournament in which he has competed for a staggering 20 years in a row.

Turning our attention to the final few years of Hewitt’s sporting career, however, tells a far more disheartening story. In the last five years (beginning with the 2011 Australian Open), Hewitt has reached the last 16 of a Grand Slam on only two occasions out of the 18 times he has entered the main draw of a major, and indeed we have to cast our gaze all the way back to Wimbledon 2009 to find the last time that he reached the quarter-finals. Without taking anything away from the legend’s achievements in the sport, we can surmise that Hewitt’s career had been on the wane for the best part of a decade, marking a somewhat disappointing trajectory for a man who at the mere age of 20 became the youngest ever player to be ranked world No.1 in singles. However, though the Australian failed to keep up with the dizzying precedent that he set for himself in his early twenties, we surely cannot fault him for lack of perseverance and determination. Until the very end Hewitt proved himself to be as confident and competitive as always, daring to dream aged 34 by proclaiming “I want six more” after his first-round victory in this year’s Australian Open against compatriot James Duckworth. That said, the question remains as to when you should hang up your racquet in an increasingly mercenary sport that could be accused of financially prioritising appearance at a tournament over performance in it.

Indeed, we spectators may well harbour a penchant for nostalgia in tennis, that is to say that we thrive on seeing players, whom we have known and loved for years, continue to perform at the highest level and keep an iron grip over the most prized trophies in the game. One need only hear the screams that perpetually greet the Swiss maestro Roger Federer as he steps onto court to realise that, especially in an individual sport such as tennis, we bear a reluctance to bid farewell to our favourites and perhaps encourage them to play on well past their prime. While it would certainly be unfair to suggest that the evergreen 34-year-old should hang up his racquet while he still stands a reasonable chance of adding to his formidable collection of 17 Grand Slams, the prospect of watching the current world No.3 dwindle with age and slide miserably down the rankings hardly bears contemplation.

Does this mean that it would be more fitting for one of the best players to have ever graced the sport to go out in a blaze of glory and call it quits while he is still near the top of his game? This notion may sound outlandish, but in recent years we can see that a precedent for this sort of behaviour has been established. Indeed, we need not look any further than last year’s US Open, at which the winner of the women’s singles, Flavia Pennetta, announced her retirement moments after raising aloft her first (and last) Grand Slam trophy, aged 33. This decision to retire at the very peak of her career seems rather poetic, and perhaps was motivated by a feeling that, already in her mid-thirties, she would be unable to scale such dizzying heights in the game again having never before even reached a Grand Slam final. Furthermore, when asked about the reasons for her premature retirement the Italian cited “una stanchezza fisica e mentale” (physical and mental fatigue), pointing to the immense toll that competing at the highest level week-in week-out takes on the elite players of this sport. Indeed, Federer himself has recently been ruled out of action for a month following an injury to his knee picked up during his Australian Open semi-final defeat by eventual winner Novak Djokovic. These revelations point to the fact that the exhausting format of today’s game means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for a player to remain at his or her peak for an extended period of time, thus thwarting the spectator’s desire for consistency and drawn-out dominance within the sport. A case in point might be 29-year-old and 14-time Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal, who recently exited the Australian Open in the first round for the first time in his history. Though writing off Nadal at this moment in time is absurdly premature, it warrants consideration whether his best years might already be behind him and whether he might have already begun on the same downward trajectory that Hewitt experienced during the later stages of his career. The Spaniard has struggled with injuries, and may never recover the form that won him 14 Slams.

Ultimately, how can players possibly know when is the best time to drop the curtain on their career? Such deliberation on their part might well prove futile given the unpredictability of the game, and indeed is not a consideration that any truly competitive player would dwell on for very long. However, we must come to terms with our unhealthy obsession with evergreen players whose duty it is to keep entertaining us beyond the constraints posed by age.