“A tennis player, plain and simple” – Federer, undone by his own tears, takes his place in the Hall of Fame
Roger Federer was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, delivering a deeply emotional speech. The 20-time Grand Slam champion broke down, thanking his family, coaches, and the sport he loves. He promised his journey with tennis is not over.
Roger Federer, Hall of Fame 2026 | © ITHF
Roger Federer thought he could hold it together. He could not.
Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport on Saturday night, the 20-time Grand Slam champion set out to deliver a composed speech and instead broke down again and again, wiping his eyes and pleading for “tissues and sunglasses.” “I thought I was doing so well for a second,” he said at one point, half-laughing through the tears. “I thought it was gonna be easy, this one.” It was the Federer the sport has long known, the man who wept at his 2022 farewell in London and after so many of his greatest wins, undone once more by the weight of the moment.
“Then I won’t play anymore”
He was introduced by his wife, Mirka, on a night that had also honoured broadcaster Mary Carillo, inducted by Billie Jean King. Mirka, rarely one for the spotlight, delivered a tribute so assured that Roger opened by marvelling at it: “She’s a good public speaker. I didn’t know that. A tough act to follow.”
Her speech carried the night’s most revealing story. Recalling the moment they learned they were expecting twins for the first time, Mirka said she warned Roger her travelling days were probably over. “Without missing a beat, he said: then I won’t play anymore,” she remembered. “He wasn’t being dramatic. He meant it. That’s who Roger is. His family comes first.” A solution was found – and two sets of twins ended up criss-crossing the world with them.
Their four children, Myla, Charlene, Leo and Lenny, were in the room, along with Federer’s visibly moved parents, Robert and Lynette. Mirka saved her sharpest line for last: “What makes me proudest isn’t what Roger accomplished when the world was watching. It’s who he is when nobody’s watching.”
“More than Borg and McEnroe combined”
When Federer finally steadied himself, he reached for humour. Forget the majors and the weeks at No 1, he said — here were the numbers that really told the story: more than 5,000 headbands (“more than Borg and McEnroe combined”), over 7,000 pairs of socks (“I doubled them up”), some 10,000 rackets strung across 25 years, and 4,040 sets played on the same knees. “Still got them, by the way,” he grinned. “If I fall, please catch me.”
Beneath the jokes, the speech was a love letter to the game and the people around it. Federer kept returning to his beginnings as a 13-year-old ball boy at the Swiss Indoors in Basel, hands behind his back, eyes on the ball. “I see you, I thank you, I was you,” he told every ball kid who ever worked his matches. He paid tribute to the coaches who shaped him – among them Peter Carter and Peter Lundgren, “two men who unfortunately are no longer with us” – and to his fitness mentor Pierre Paganini, who survived his endless questions.
“They call this the Hall of Fame,” he said, “but fame was never the goal. My goal was to spend my life doing something I love, with people I love.” He was, he insisted, never a professional athlete so much as “a tennis player, plain and simple”, a fan of the game before he ever played it, and one still.
If there was a message for what comes next, it was that he isn’t going far. “My time as a player is done, but tennis will always stand at the intersection of everything I care most about,” he said. “So this is not a goodbye.”
The boy from Basel signed off by thanking everyone “for sharing the journey that brought us together.” By then, the tears had long since won.
