My Federer Obsession: Part 3

As I said in the first excerpt from my book, it took me a while to become obsessed with Roger Federer. In the years following my first sighting of him at Wimbledon, I paid him relatively little attention. I kept vague tabs on his results but I didn’t watch many of his matches.

The problem was that I had too much else going on. I was in my mid twenties and was trying to carve out a niche for myself in the adult world–a goal that, since university, had seemed impossibly distant.

Work preoccupied me a good deal. I was finally making some headway as a journalist. There were the standard mid twenties social pursuits: going to parties, hanging out with friends.

And I was falling in love—something that hadn’t happened in quite a while. My relationship with my new girlfriend–a fellow journalist–was all consuming. The result was that Roger Federer, for all his appeal, seemed like a distant, tangential figure. My life didn’t have room in it for me to become obsessed with him.

By late 2006, though, things were beginning to change. I had just turned thirty and I felt less pressured at work. My relationship was running…