Florian Mayer played his last tennis match as a professional at the US Open – and is satisfied with his decision.
By Jörg Allmeroth from New York
He did not afford much sentimentality at the moment of his final farewell. There were no tears, no emotion, no big scene at all: Florian Mayer just packed up his things at 5.45 pm on this Monday afternoon in New York, wrote some autographs, then marched down from Court Seven of the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.
And then war´s, a 17-year tennis career was over with the 264th defeat in the 504th game (2:6, 2:6, 7:5, 4:6 against the Croatian Borna Coric), a last appearance on one of the big stages of this sport. Without a happy ending, but Veteran Mayer, the realist and pragmatist, hadn’t expected that either, at best he hoped: “I just can’t keep up with the younger ones anymore. And so it’s no fun anymore. But I’m proud of what I’ve done.”
Mayer’s inner farewell to tennis had taken place long before the actual farewell. There was also some alienation from modern tennis, a not particularly pleasant view of the changes in the industry: “Selfishness has become ever greater. Many only look at their self-portrayal at Instagram. It was the right moment to stop.” Mayer had also become tired of the constant packing of suitcases, the tennis dog years with their 30 weeks of gondolaing through the time zones and across the continents, at some point he had “literally cursed” the trips to the next tournament, the life between airport, hotel and hotel complex: “Suddenly you just lack the energy for it”.
On his last evening as a professional player, Mayer said in a dreary, unadorned interview room in the catacombs of the Arthur Ashe Arena, “I have achieved much more than I ever dared to dream. In his heyday, the stylist was a feared opponent among many craftsmen, especially because of his idiosyncratic technique and blows that were not in any textbook. Twice he advanced into the Wimbledon quarter-finals as an unconventional outsider, beating highly regarded colleagues like Andy Roddick out of the field. He experienced his greatest moment when he no longer believed in it himself – at the Gerry Weber Open 2016, when he suddenly became the title hero after eternal injury breaks and a tedious comeback. He won the final against the man of the future in German tennis, Alexander Zverev.
Relief. That is the overwhelming feeling he feels now, Mayer said. Relief that “it’s over.” The competitive pressure, the stress of the duels, the lonely drudgery in power rooms and on training courts, the agonies always in the preparation for the season. He used to be number 18 in the world, but on the home stretch of his tennis career he had to cope with defeats, often right at the start of the competitions. “It wasn’t funny anymore, but I just had to go through with it,” says Mayer. The last tour of the familiar locations, with the final stop in New York.
Tennis was also a great teacher for life. “Without discipline, nothing works in this job. If you’re not 100 percent into it, you’ve already lost,” says Mayer. He wasn’t in the end anymore, and that’s why he quit. It wasn’t goodbye to tennis forever: “I can already imagine working as a coach.” But now Mayer wants to travel privately and without compulsion, to Fuerteventura and South Tyrol. He’s gone, then.