ATP: Roger Federer and the right moment to stop

Last weekend Roger Federer and Team Europa defended the Laver Cup. How long he still wants to play on the ATP tour will be determined by the Swiss’s own competitiveness.

Actually, Roger Federer did quite well on this Laver Cup weekend in Chicago. The Swiss won his two singles against Nick Kyrgios and John Isner, the defeats in the doubles alongside Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev were close but painful.

However, pair running is not the Maestro’s preferred discipline, even though he can play competently and successfully in critical moments. See for example the Davis Cup final 2014 in Lille, when Federer, together with Stan Wawrinka, played the Frenchmen Richard Gasquet and Julien Benneteau humorlessly from the stadium.

But the day will also come for Federer when he no longer feels that he can keep up with the very best. “I need to feel that I can beat the best players and win the biggest tournaments,” Federer explained a few days before the Laver Cup at an event for the benefit of Andy Roddick’s foundation. “Because when you realize that feeling is waning, it’s really time to stop.”

Roger Federer is not yet ready for the year 2019, when he will start as defending champion at the Australian Open. He still enjoys everything that other colleagues find annoying: training. Or even the press conferences.

The next appearances of the 20-time major winner are planned for Shanghai and Basel, while Federer has provisionally given his name to the last ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the year in Paris-Bércy. If the two upcoming events go well, however, a start on the Seine would come as a surprise. After all, the ATP finale in London is still pending at the end of the year.

On the other hand, the fact that Federer has long since qualified for the eight-man gala in the O2 Arena suggests that the moment when the 37-year-old no longer feels ready for the big tasks has not yet arrived.