Roger Federer, a genius who made tennis look effortless, is having a problem: His body, his mind, and most of all his pride are giving him a hard time. The latest sign: He’s started calling Roger Federer, “Uncle Roger.”
This is all bad news for Federer. He knows that the most obvious thing to do while he is suffering from depression would be to ask for help, but he has always felt too ashamed to do so. He doesn’t really want anyone to touch him, and he has become convinced that if he feels any sense of relief at being alone, it is only because his friends and family know a lot more about him than anyone else does.
Last week, Federer suffered what seemed like a mild depression after the U.S. Open loss to Djokovic in New York. He seemed sad, but as if he were suffering from a bad hangover, and he seemed to accept his defeat without any real struggle. (He had a very good match, but he made some careless mistakes that could have led to an upset, and he needed a strong serve to avoid another upset.)
Federer has always been a big believer that if he works hard enough, he’ll win, and has been able to brush off the emotional pain of other upsets by putting it in a separate file, not in the same section as the mental. So last week at the Open, even though Federer lost, he did things like walk out to the practice locker room at 9 a.m. on the very first day of the tournament without a drink and without brushing his teeth (he had an upset stomach the day before), or talking about his loss over lunch. At first, these seemed like small acts of rebellion, but it was then that he started to get depressed.
He went to bed feeling like he didn’t want to play tennis anymore. He woke up and said to himself, “Roger, I can’t believe I’m having