- “Effortless” is a myth
“I say that as someone who has heard that word a lot. ‘Effortless.’ People would say my play was effortless. Most of the time, they meant it as a compliment… But it used to frustrate me when they would say. ‘He barely broke a sweat!’,” Roger Federer said. “The truth is, I had to work very hard… to make it look easy. I spent years whining… swearing… throwing my racket… before I learned to keep my cool… I didn’t get where I got on pure talent alone. I got there by trying to outwork my opponents.” - ‘It’s only a point’
“You can work harder than you thought possible… and still lose. I have,” he said, recounting how he processed his loss to Rafael Nadal at the Wimbledon 2008 finals. “I lost Wimbledon. I lost my number-one ranking. And suddenly, people said, ‘He had a great run. Is this the changing of the guard?’ But I knew what I had to do… keep working. And keep competing,” Federer said. - “Life is bigger than the court.”
“I worked a lot, learned a lot, and ran a lot of miles in that small space (tennis court)… But the world is a whole lot bigger than that” he told the students. He said that when he started out, he knew that while tennis could show him the world, it could never be the “…even when I was in the top five… it was important to me to have a life… a rewarding life, full of travel, culture, friendships, and especially family… I never abandoned my roots, and I never forgot where I came from.”
Federer spoke about his love for travel, not just as a tourist but even for his philanthropic work.