Federer Rejoining Tour, With Babies in Tow
Federer Rejoining Tour, With Babies in Tow
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
FEUSISBERG, Switzerland — It was a few hours before the Federers’ first flight as a family. The new father, Roger, was sounding surprisingly relaxed as he sat on a terrace with a panoramic view of Lake Zurich and talked about crossing a much more imposing body of water — the Atlantic — with his wife, Mirka, and their identical twins, Charlene and Myla.
The girls were born July 23 in Zurich; they were checked out of the hospital Tuesday. They already have traveling papers, and the first international stop of their very young, presumably peripatetic lives will be Montreal. Federer will return to competition earlier than he expected, for the Rogers Cup, after one of the best runs of his or any tennis player’s life.
“I was obviously only going to do this if everything was safe and good,” Federer said Friday morning, in his first interview since he won Wimbledon last month. “Mirka went through a check yesterday. The babies have been at the hospital for 10 days, and everything is perfect. So we’re doing it. Big family. Big trip. On the bandwagon. I’m really excited to see how we’re going to manage it.”
For most of the world’s new parents, the idea of taking infant twins on a long-haul journey before they were three weeks old would not be cause for rejoicing. Not with baby carriers, economy-class seating and dread-filled seatmates to manage.
But Federer, for all his down-to-earth appeal, does enjoy his privileges. Although he often crosses oceans on commercial airplanes, he made Friday’s trans-Atlantic flight in a private jet, with a baby nurse on board to help Mirka and Roger negotiate the trip and the jet-lagged nights to come.
“That’s a big help,” Federer said. “But Mirka is really hands-on. It’s great to have the help, but I think it’s all been working well since we came home for three or four days. Mirka doesn’t mind getting up in the night, doesn’t mind feeding the babies at whatever time, changing the nappies. For her, if she can’t do it, it’s like she’s missing out on something.”
Federer has done his best not to miss much himself. With impeccable Swiss timing, Mirka gave birth in the fallow tennis stretch between Wimbledon, where Federer broke the record for Grand Slam singles victories, and the United States Open, where he will be trying to win his sixth straight men’s singles title.
“We didn’t completely just aim for a certain window, so for it to happen during this period of time, we got lucky,” Federer said of the twins’ arrival date. “Because I was scared. You know how it is. After Week 25, you never know when a baby can come, so at the beginning of the French Open, I was thinking that we have to get through two Grand Slams, and Mirka has to be there. We’re not in Switzerland. It could happen anytime really.”
The Federers found out Mirka was pregnant in January, during a tournament in Doha, Qatar, and learned that she was expecting twins after a doctor’s appointment during the Australian Open that month. Federer said he was thrilled at the prospect, but uncertain what such momentous news might do to his tennis game.
In his next match, he overwhelmed Juan Martín del Potro of Argentina, 6-3, 6-0, 6-0, in the quarterfinals. “It was like, O.K., seems like it’s not affecting me,” Federer said with a laugh. “That was a good start. It gave me confidence.”
He lost in the Australian Open final to Rafael Nadal, famously breaking down in tears. In March, he had back-to-back semifinal losses in hardcourt tournaments in the United States.
But Federer surged at midseason, aided by several factors: a healthy back, Nadal’s struggles and perhaps an increase in mobility that came with dropping nearly 10 pounds. He did not rule out the possibility that having Mirka’s impending delivery occupying his thoughts helped him in some way.
“The thing is, I really thought it was going to do the opposite effect,” he said. “That I was going to be feeling under pressure, because I’d be feeling like I better win some more Slams before the babies came, and then apparently it’s so hard to win Slams.”
“Maybe there was just this little extra at 30-all or at 30-40 against Tommy Haas at the French Open,” he said, referring to his victory in the Round of 16 in which he lost the first two sets. “And maybe all those little things come into play, because so many things are happening, and in tennis, defeat and victory are so close to each other. Sometimes those little things can give you a little lift without you knowing it.”
Friday’s interview was conducted in a spa on a slope in Feusisberg, a short drive from Federer’s apartment on the south side of Lake Zurich. Originally from Basel, Federer moved because some of his closest friends reside in the area. He also owns a chalet near the Swiss resort town of Lenzerheide and another residence in Dubai, where he frequently trains. But Switzerland, where he typically only spends a few weeks a year, remains home.
“Nice and quiet; drive five minutes and you have the cows,” he said. “I like it.”
Federer publicly announced Mirka’s pregnancy at the Indian Wells tournament in California in March. He decided, on medical advice, not to mention at first that they were expecting twins, although they did inform family and close friends.
“The next thing you know, I’m seven months through the year and at the end, nobody’s really asking me questions about if it’s twins or not,” Federer said. “And then I said, All right, I’ll just play along until the very, very end.”
That meant Federer continued to refer to the impending arrival of “the baby” through the many interviews and news conferences in Paris and London. And on Friday, as if out of habit, he lapsed into the singular on occasion, too.
“I had to really battle myself,” he said. “I had a couple where I said, ‘We’re really excited to have some babies,’ and I was thinking, Is that already giving it away?”
But after delivery (by Caesarean section), the tennis world has its latest set of identical twins to go with the world’s top-ranked doubles team, Bob and Mike Bryan of the United States.
“I was thinking that they’re going to be playing tricks on us like crazy,” Federer said of his girls. “But they don’t look the same at the moment. I thought right away I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but you know, one is a bit lighter than the other one, so it’s not automatically the same right away. I can tell them apart very easily now, and Mirka, too.”
Federer said he spent nearly three weeks at the hospital, sleeping in the same room with Mirka, who had checked in early; later, he was sleeping in the same room with Mirka and the twins. He still found time last week to practice for six straight days near the hospital with the Austrian player Stefan Koubek.
“I was sometimes very tired,” he said. “Don’t know if it was more from practice or from not getting the sleep you usually get.”
Federer, who turns 28 on Saturday, said he had received a congratulatory text message from Nadal, who missed Wimbledon because of a knee injury.
“I messaged him and wished him well for his injury and coming back to the tour,” said Federer, who regained the No. 1 ranking in Nadal’s absence. “It’s basically understood that we write each other in moments like this.”
They will soon be able to speak face to face, and perhaps resume their rivalry. Both players plan to play in the Masters Series events in Montreal and Cincinnati, which are big-money prologues to the United States Open. The Open, the season’s final Grand Slam event, is the only one of the four that Nadal has not won.
Federer has not lost in New York since 2003, but he will arrive this year with a bigger entourage and with the biggest career questions answered. In a burst of achievement this summer, he won the only major title he lacked, the French Open, and broke Pete Sampras’s record for Grand Slam singles titles by winning his 15th at Wimbledon.
“It’s a lot at once,” Federer said. “You almost want to have a longer break after that unbelievable win in Paris, so you can ride the Paris wave for so long. But then right away Wimbledon came, and I won that, too. But honestly, just today, I was in the shower thinking I haven’t even really thought about my Wimbledon win at all the last week.”
Raising newborns will do that to a parent. Now comes the challenge of raising them on the road.
