Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession
William Skidelsky
Features and Notes
Did I choose to become a Federer fan, or was the process involuntary? Although it's more romantic to depict myself as having no real say in the matter, there was a time, early on, when I think things could have...
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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...
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By 2003 when I first saw Roger Federer, tennis didn't mean much to me but this hadn't always been the case. As a boy I loved the sport with an all-consuming passion. Between the ages of about five and eleven,...
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I first saw Roger Federer play in 2003. At Wimbledon on Centre Court. It wasn't love at first sight. During the first week of the tournament, I received a call from a friend. He had a spare ticket for the...
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Despite my personal feelings about Nadal (Click Here) there is a sense in which he was necessary. Even I can see that. Without him, men's tennis would have become anodyne, predictable. Federer would have dominated for much longer than he...
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A blot appeared on the otherwise sunny vista that stretched before Federer in 2004-2006, and it took the form of a preternaturally muscled Spaniard. Like most diehard Federer fans, I loathe Rafael Nadal. I cannot stand the man or his...
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In 2014, having paid a tout a small fortune for the privilege, I went to my first ever Wimbledon men's final. Over nearly four hours, I watched my idol, Roger Federer, do his best to defeat Novak Djokovic. He came...
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My friend Ben, who once wrote an article explaining why he disliked Federer, has a theory about the Swiss. He thinks he's a bully. When, early in his career, he was easily the best player in the world, he happily...