Here's Why Federer's Developmental Story Should Be As Famous As He Is
We should spend at least as much energy discussing the typical path as we do the dramatic exceptions
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As a connoisseur of cold takes, I’ve been thinking of writing about Roger Federer since he retired last month — following a 24-year-career in which he won a mere 103 ATP singles titles (including 20 Grand Slams), and 1,251 total matches. I want to share a favorite story:
When Federer was a teenager, he became good enough to warrant an interview with a local newspaper. The reporter asked what he would buy with a first hypothetical paycheck from playing tennis, and young Roger answered, “a Mercedes.” His mother was aghast to read that. She was relieved, however, when the reporter let her listen to a recording of the interview, and she realized there had been a mistake. The boy had said “Mehr CDs,” in Swiss German. He just wanted “more CDs.”
I first read this story in the excellent book Strokes of Genius, by my friend and former Sports Illustrated colleague Jon Wertheim. Wertheim described Federer’s parents as “pully…if they nudged him at all, it was to stop taking tennis so seriously,” and wrote that his father only had one mandate: “Just don’t cheat.”
When I read elsewhere about Federer meeting Tiger Woods for the first time in 2006, I was interested to see that Federer said he’d never spoken to anybody “who was so familiar with the feeling of being invincible.” But he also highlighted a stark contrast: Woods was on national television at age two; Federer said that as a kid he was “just dreaming of just once meeting Boris Becker.”
I noted in Range that Federer also sampled skiing, wrestling, swimming, skateboarding, basketball, handball, table tennis, badminton, and soccer. I didn’t learn anything about rugby, but Federer’s family granted me permission to use a photo of him as a six-year-old in a TED Talk, and in it he’s holding a rugby ball.
I don’t mention any of this to suggest that there’s one best way to parent or to develop as an athlete. Obviously, there are many different paths, even including those that end in the same place. But, according to sports science research, Federer’s path was more typical, and Tiger’s more the exception. Yet Tiger’s story might be the single most influential tale of development ever told, while even tennis enthusiasts usually don’t know Federer’s story.
I think it’s fair to tell both of these stories, but I think it’s useful to understand which is the exception and which is the norm. And that goes for every domain. We focus on exceptional stories like Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of college after his sophomore year to grow Facebook; he once famously noted that “young people are just smarter.” (One doesn’t hear him saying that now...) Meanwhile, a study published by researchers at M.I.T., Northwestern University, and the U.S. Census Bureau found that the average age of a founder of a fast-growing startup (top 0.1%) was 45. (I should note that a venture capitalist whose writing I admire suggested that this is “urban legend.” You can read the paper for free here to inform your own conclusions.)
One other little memory of Federer: back when I was at SI, I once saw him warming up at the U.S. Open. Most of the athletes I’d seen were stretching, or rallying, or practicing powerful serves. Federer appeared to have stationed a ballboy across the court with his hand outstretched, and he seemed to be trying to hit soft bouncers right into the boy’s hand without him having to move it. Basically, it looked like something a kid would enjoy.
The aforementioned Jon Wertheim once asked Federer on TV about his multisport childhood, to which Federer responded:
"I would tell all the juniors and kids out there, do other sports too, for fun. Go play squash, go ride your bike, go play basketball, go ski, whatever it is...until you are in the mid-teens I think you can really do everything, and even later on too, because if you only start focusing too much on one sport only I feel like you can get burned out and start seeing the sport for a job, rather than actually a hobby, and I still see tennis as my hobby — that became my dream job, you know. I think it's really good for the mind to do different sports."
You can watch the full clip below. (Let me know in the comments if you have trouble playing it.)
If you're interested in a longer discussion on the "Roger" model of development, and how it relates to non-sports domains, I just discussed it with my friend Pablo Torre, host of ESPN Daily, for an entire podcast episode. You can listen to that here.
And finally, Tiger (according to Tiger) played baseball and ran cross-country and track and field as a child, and got into outdoor sports as an adult. I don't think I'd ever seen an interviewer address Tiger this way: "Being a multisport athlete as you were growing up..."
Surprises abound! Human development — even the best known stories — often get more complex the deeper you look. You can watch that clip with Tiger here. Thanks for reading.
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Until next time...
David
P.S. A quick congrats to dedicated Range Widely reader Matt Thomas — whose comments below posts regularly enrich my experience of writing this newsletter — on finishing War and Peace after I kept mentioning it. (It's long but it's a barn burner, people! And an easy read in the sense that Tolstoy tells you everything you need to know, so you can read quickly.) Matt noted that he's beginning to understand what Henry James meant when he said the subject of the book is "all of life." My personal favorite comment on W&P is (allegedly) from Mark Twain: "Tolstoy carelessly neglects to include a boat race."
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