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

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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’ve been waiting for a Federer bio to come out in the U.S. for a while now. For someone who has regularly appeared on our TV sets for 20 years, and who has been interviewed thousands of times, Federer can still seem like a bit of a mystery, at least in the States, or at least to me.

When he falls in love with his wife to be Mirka, his play is slightly off, which is lovely, but never expanded upon by Chris. When his coach dies, his play is completely off and this is described well. The period where Federa had no coach has no good description, just opinion. The impact of injury is glossed over as par for the course. The birth of his twins barely gets amention. 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. one explanation for the dearth of topflight American men’s tennis players in the 2010s was that the Europeans had a developmental advantage growing up on clay. He maintained that too many young Americans were adept at striking the ball but not at playing the game itself. Clay was perhaps the best classroom, blunting raw power and encouraging point construction ch bin ehrlich positiv erstaunt – ich hätte nicht gedacht, wie sehr mir dieses Buch gefallen würde und bin froh, dass ich es, ein Geschenk einer Freundin, angefangen zu lesen habe. Und nicht mehr aufhören konnte.

Dies ist ein Buch mit über 40 Interviews von Wegbegleitern Federers. Es ist in 4 Untertiteln unterteilt: Vorbild, Rivale, Freund, Gamechanger. In den jeweiligem Untertitel werden diverse Personen befragt und diese Interviews sind wirklich interessant und lehrreich. Man erfährt viel über die Sportikone und sein wirken auch neben dem Tennisplatz. His subject is one of the greatest sportspeople to have ever lived, a tennis player who has inspired and thrilled like no other. And yet Clarey writes about him in the jaded tones of a reporter who doesn't really get what the fuss is about and kind of prefers other players anyway. I am mostly a passive observer of things that happen in the sports world and would get excited over certain games occasionally. 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.”

As you read you get to know the player but not the man . I loved the history , the context , the journey but I have not known the person , the struggles, the dilemma the hurt of the player or the man. The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings may drive many readers crazy with the author's meanderings, but they're meant for me: it is the same way I read or wander the shelves or google hop from topic to topic. I skimmed much of the tennis stuff, but there's plenty more on Nietzsche, Beethoven, Larkin, Amis, Hitchens, Burning Man, indulgences, D. H. Lawrence, films, and myriad jazz performers, some of which I've never heard of. The Wonderboom Bluetooth speaker and Spotify are worth their weight. I play every song he mentions.

Roger Federer: The Biography

It was also a great joy to get thoughts from his rivals like Nadal, Djokovic, Safin, and Agassi in the many interview excerpts. We get to see the similarities and differences in personality between Roger the pleaser, Rafa the fighter, and Novak the searcher, as Clarey describes them.

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. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the title because there’s not that much on Roger Federer (or simply “Roger” as Dyer insists on calling him), or on any of the other tennis players he mentions, but then there probably wouldn’t be, would there? Professional sportsmen are a bit of a dreary bunch. Except for Borg who went on a bizarre personal odyssey following his defeat at the hands of McEnroe and his exit from pro tennis. Moreover, there are more and more people vaccinated, having passed infection or having fresh test. All these “categories” are in Poland allowed to watch sports live.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 . Roger Federer's game is so fascinating because it always seems so effortless and Christopher handles this topic throughout the book. Some people and even players mention how his 'effortless' play could have been taken two ways. If he won, some would say that he is magnificent in his craft while others would claim Roger is lazy if he were to lose. I think this duality is an honest assumption that I too have thought a few times when I first started to follow his career. But the beauty of this book is that it helps you understand that this cool and calm personality of his takes training and hard work.

This biography penned by sports journalist Christopher Clarey provides us a complete picture of Roger Federer’s entry in to the world of tennis, his brilliance , endurance and staying power in the top ranks for nearly 20 years. You aren't going to jibe with all the figures and examples that Dyer throws at you, I for one found the jazzier parts of the book to drag, but I loved the overall sentiment.Roger Federer: Die Biografie was first published in 2019 in German, but now the publisher, Polaris, has translated the book into English, and some minor updates have brought it up to date for 2021. As a Roger Federer fan, this was a joy to read from start to end. I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of tennis. Nicolas Mahut tells how he was so nervous to play the man he calls “James Bond”; Pat Rafter discusses his 3-0 record against Federer; Stefanos Tsitsipas and Matteo Berrettini reveal how they were inspired to play by Federer; Coco Gauff and Ons Jabeur share their feelings about a man who transcended tennis and there’s also a chapter from Craig O’Shannessy, who shares a secret behind Federer’s stunning 2017 Australian Open triumph. Geoff Dyer’s The Last Days of Roger Federer is a cleverly constructed meditation on the last thrusts of the careers of notable artists, musicians and athletes (mostly men) disguised as a rambling essay, or maybe it’s the other way around?

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