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Spring 2005
Roger Federer: The Making of a Global Ambassador
ROGER FEDERER, already one of the most talented tennis players to ever grace this planet, wants to change the world...one child at a time.
By Mark Mathabane, DEUCE
There's
little doubt that Roger Federer, blessed with one of the most complete
games in tennis history, and possessing a mental toughness so
demoralizing to his opponents that it enables him to effortlessly, so
it seems, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, has the potential to
become the best player of all-time. It's a potential certified by the
keen eyes of such legends as Rod Laver and John McEnroe. More
important, it's a potential that has already yielded a remarkable
harvest. Since turning professional in 1998, the 24-year-old superstar
from Oberwil, Switzerland, has achieved and solidified the ATP World
No. 1 ranking, bagged four Grand Slam titles, captured 25 singles
titles and garnered an astonishing 16 consecutive finals wins on all
surfaces on which the game is played.
But little
is known about Roger's other important potential. It's one that, if
cultivated with as much passion as he's done his near flawless
shot-making, is capable of transforming him into one of the game's most
effective global ambassadors. This potential in Roger is best
illustrated by revealing the human being behind the superstar. That's
what I sought to do when, shortly before the beginning of the Pacific
Life Open, I asked him to talk about why he's inspired by the different
cultures of the world, and why he feels compelled to use his fame to
make a difference in the lives of the poor and less fortunate. He
eagerly obliged. “I always enjoy talking this way,” he said, flashing a
smile that illumined his playful brown eyes, “instead of always about
my tennis.”
Roger began talking fervently about a
trip he'd recently made to South Africa, a country where I, and his
mother Lynette, were born and raised, incredibly, only about a mile or
so apart. But because of apartheid, a political system that mandated
the strict segregation of the races, we grew up in circumstances so
vastly different we might as well have been denizens of separate
planets. Apartheid led Lynette to leave South Africa in 1973 for
Switzerland, where Roger was born in Basel on August 8, 1981; it also
drove me in 1978, at age 18, to search for freedom and opportunity in
America, when Stan Smith, the 1971 Wimbledon champion, helped me get a
tennis scholarship.
Roger pointed out that he'd
visited South Africa with his parents many times as a child during the
apartheid era: to see relatives, to go on safari, and to visit Cape
Town, one of the loveliest cities in the world. But he admitted that
he'd never been to ghettos like the one I grew up in. Yes, he'd seen
the teeming and squalid shacks without running water or electricity
from a distance, and he wondered what kind of people lived in such
awful places, what their lives were really like, and how they survived.
On his latest visit he found out. Through the
1-year-old Roger Federer Foundation, which has partnered with Imbewu (a
Xhosa word for “seed”), an organization of Swiss and South African
volunteers, he journeyed to New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. It is one of
the most impoverished and overcrowded ghettos in South Africa, where
violence, disease and AIDS are maiming and killing countless lives, and
where it's not uncommon to see children scavenging for food at garbage
dumps to stay alive, like I used to do growing up in a shack in
Alexandra, a one-square-mile Johannesburg ghetto which now has a
population of more than 500,000 people. The partnership provides 30
children in three schools with uniforms, stationery and two meals a
day. In addition, Roger's foundation pays the salaries of three
full-time social workers at the local Imbewu.
Though New Brighton,
like Alexandra, is a no-go zone to most whites, who stay away in part
because of unreasonable fears of being mugged or killed, Roger had no
such trepidation. Nor did Cliff Drysdale, a fellow South African, TV
commentator, and one of the game’s most respected elder statesmen, who
went to school in Port Elizabeth, and would occasionally venture into
New Brighton for a beer. “I believe Federer genuinely feels empathy for
people,” Cliff recently said. “His visit was definitely no publicity
stunt.”
“I wasn’t afraid at all,”
Roger said about the day-long trip that included a visit to an AIDS
hospital, to three schools, and to the shack of a student his
foundation supports. “Even though it was odd being the only white
person. I wanted to see things for myself, to feel what it’s like to
live like that. I also wanted to find out how much difference my
foundation was making in the lives of the people there.”
This willingness to make
oneself uncomfortable, this solidarity with those who are different
from us—be it through color, race, religion, nationality, or sexual
orientation— isn’t innate in people. We are born selfish, self-centered
and tribal, and are likely to continue that way unless we learn
otherwise, According to his mother, Roger learned about the importance
of being unselfish, tolerant and empathetic in childhood, and often by
making mistakes.
“He was just like other
children, naughty and not always obedient,” Lynette said from her home
in Switzerland, “He had to be exposed to situations that challenged him
to change, to see the world differently, and to take responsibility for
his actions.”
She recalled the story of a
Turkish girl who was new to Roger’s primary school. She couldn’t speak
German, so the teacher spent more time with her. Roger and his
classmates were furious: They felt it was unfair because they too
wanted the teacher’s attention. Roger complained to his mom.
Lynette was too wise a
mother to condone her son’s insensitivity, which could have easily
ripened into prejudice. Having come of age under apartheid, she was
lucky to have had parents who were liberal enough to teach her to treat
everyone the same. Lynette asked Roger to put himself in the Turkish
girl’s shoes, to imagine how he’d feel, alone among strangers who
didn’t understand him, and who didn’t have the kindness to help him
adjust. Roger’s teacher reinforced that simple lesson in empathy. She
began teaching the class about Turkey, its long history, rich culture,
and diverse peoples. She even had Roger and his classmates learn to
speak Turkish.
“Just learning to count to
10 was very hard,” Roger said with an embarrassed grin. “When that
happened to me, I finally understood what the girl must have felt.”
Empathy became a gateway to
friendships in a broader world. Roger, whose other passion is playing
soccer—his favorite professional team is FC Basel—soon found himself on
a team that was 50 percent Turkish and Spanish. Lynette, a strong
believer in team sports, is glad that her son played soccer before
settling on tennis because it taught him the importance of “working
together for a common goal.” Roger readily concedes that to be
successful in tennis, one often has to be intensely individualistic.
“But there are times when we should put ego and competition aside and
work together as a team,” he said, reaching for a glass of water on the
marbled coffee table in his hotel room. To that effect, he was
spearheading, with the help of the ATP Foundation, an all-star
exhibition featuring 10 of the top men’s players in the world. The goal
was to raise funds for UNICEF and other worldwide relief efforts.
In South Africa, this
willingness to strive together toward a common goal, to subsume self in
universal selfhood, to walk in other people’s shoes, and to feel their
pain and want to do something to alleviate it, is called having
“Ubuntu.” Black South Africans believe that because humanity is
indivisible, and its survival collective, one cannot be fully human
until one affirms the humanity of others, including that of one’s
enemies. That’s one reason why Nelson Mandela, despite having spent 27
years of the prime of his life in jail for the crime of fighting for
his people’s dignity, emerged in 1990 not bent on revenge, but ready to
reconcile with his former jailers. This magnanimous gesture gave birth
to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which not only prevented
civil war, but also freed future generations of blacks and whites from
the vicious and self-destructive cycle of an eye for an eye.
Ubuntu is not unique to
South Africa and can be learned by anyone. But to learn its vital
lessons one must have good teachers. Among the best teachers are our
parents’ example, and the characters of those we admire and seek to
emulate. Life, nature, good books, the judicious use of television, and
travel are also excellent teachers.
But as Roger astutely
pointed out, “One cannot learn if one is not willing.” He was willing
to learn, often the hard way, summoning the courage to venture beyond
his comfort zone. When he was 14 he left home to join the Swiss
National Tennis Center, in the French-speaking part of the country. It
meant being separated from his close-knit family, having to live among
strangers, and having to struggle to learn a different language. It was
tough. For almost six months he was homesick and depressed, and his
tennis suffered. He could have given up but he didn’t because he loved
tennis, madly. So he turned adversity into strength. He learned French
and made friends.
Among his best friends from
his days at the National Tennis center is Yves Allegro, an occasional
doubles partner and Davis Cup teammate. This is the guy that Roger
plays cards, listens to music, and horses around with, I thought as he
introduced me to the tennis journeyman with a scruffy beard and
guileless face, who, since turning pro in 1997, has won just one
doubles title and earned a little more than $300,000, compared to
Roger’s 25 titles and more than $15 million in prize money (not
including income from endorsing products by Nike, Wilson, Emmi, Maurice
Lacroix and Swiss Airlines).
It is revealing that Roger
surrounds himself by friends and family instead of bodyguards and
publicists. It connotes someone who is self-reliant, independent,
comfortable in his own skin, and bent on shaping his own destiny. His
phenomenal 2004 season of playing without a coach, during which he
compiled an 18-0 record against Top 10 players, reveals a prodigy of
such confidence in his own abilities that his opponents will have a
hard time thwarting his ambition to become the best player ever.
Listening to Roger talk
about his resolve to become a professional tennis player reminded me of
my own determination, when I was still trapped in the ghetto, to become
the first member of my family to be educated, to learn English, my
sixth language. And to use as unlikely a sport as tennis to escape from
apartheid, to find a way to make it to America and acquire
opportunities to help my six siblings and parents, and to make my
contribution in the struggle to abolish apartheid.
I’ve been able to achieve
most of those seemingly impossible dreams thanks to Stan Smith, who
provided me with an opportunity my own country had cruelly denied me
because of the color of my skin. Because of his generosity, I’ve
traveled the world, graduated from college with honors, written
bestsellers which have inspired the likes of Oprah Winfrey and
President Clinton. Most important, I’ve been able to give back by
paying for the school needs of hundreds of students in my hometown
through a scholarship fund I set up in honor of my mother who, though
illiterate, dragged me, bound and gagged, to school when I was 6, in
order to save me from the dead-end life of street gangs to which I was
enamored.
Roger is seeking to
engender these same opportunities and his empathy is obvious, often
revealing itself in refreshing ways. Shortly after sitting down, he
asked if I was thirsty. When I replied I was, he didn’t snap a finger
at some fawning minion. Rather, he rose from the sofa where we were
sitting, fetched me a glass of cranberry juice, and, though visibly
exhausted, sat down again and summoned the energy to talk feelingly
about his first acquaintance with a world I knew so well that the
hopes, fears, passions, and agonies of its inhabitants were an
inseparable part of my soul.
Throughout our interview, I
never detected a false note, or a desire to impress with a fake
solidarity intended to prop up an image. Though still very young, he
gets it in a way similar to how Arthur Ashe got it when he had the
courage to defy militant black anger and visit South Africa in 1973.
Ashe’s visit forever changed my life. After scrounging up pennies in
fare for a nightmarish train ride to the teeming township of Soweto to
see him (during which several people were electrocuted while dangling
outside windows because the train was so overcrowded), I was finally
able to confirm that the black phenomenon I’d heard so much about was
indeed real.
Ashe was literally the
first free black man I’d ever seen. I remember telling him, years
later, after I had made it to America, that his visit in 1973 taught me
to believe in myself, to always have hope, to never allow
discrimination to define my humanity, to never, out of fear, defer my
dreams, lest they shrivel like raisins in the sun, and to never
sacrifice my Ubuntu on the altar of hatred. Tears came to Federer’s
eyes when he heard this.
I told Roger I was glad he
had visited New Brighton, wrenching as he admitted the trip was. I told
him that there may have been a boy or girl among the hundreds he met
with that day, who would have hung on his every word, appreciated that
someone famous cared about their plight, and was willing to keep alive
in them the hope they badly need if they are to have a realistic chance
of making it out. I told Roger that one of those kids might find his
character worthy of emulation, just as I had done Ashe’s. If that
happened, I said, then the children who were dying of HIV-AIDS at the
hospital that he visited would not have died in vain. One of the
students the Roger Federer Foundation supports will remember them, I
said, and will use their deaths as inspiration to defy the odds and
make it. And perhaps upon making it, he or she will say, “Thanks Roger,
for paying for my school needs, for now I, too, am famous, but in a
different way. I’ve discovered the cure for AIDS.”
After a stunned silence,
Roger said, in accented, mellifluous English, which he speaks fluently,
along with German and French: “It would be a great honor to have done
so little and have something so great happen.”
Tennis players, I believe,
are uniquely positioned to raise consciousness about exigencies of our
common humanity. After all, the world is their playground. All they
have to do is to also make it their neighborhood. Some have chosen to
do just that, sustaining hope in places as disparate as Las Vegas,
where the Andre Agassi Foundation is working to educate inner city
children, or the poor townships of South Africa, where the Roger
Federer Foundation is helping save a country’s future, or rural Texas,
where the Andy Roddick Foundation is focusing on children’s health,
literacy and abuse issues.
The potential of tennis to
help bridge the economic and social gaps and divisions that sometimes
makes people strangers to, or enemies of each other, is limitless,
provided, as Roger has said, players are willing to connect with the
real world beyond tennis, to use their fame and fortune to make a
difference in the lives of the poor and less fortunate. Ubuntu tells us
that humanity is indivisible and its survival is collective. In all
parts of the world there live people just like us. They cry, they
laugh, they dream, they fear, they hope, they pray, and they die. The
only difference is that they are over there, and we are lucky,
extremely lucky, to be over here, and to have, as Andre Agassi so well
put it, “an amazing life.”
But with that luck comes
responsibility. Players like Federer, Agassi, Roddick, despite the
impossible demands on their limited time, and the need to nurture their
careers, have chosen to listen to the umpire conscience saying, “Are
you ready to serve?” And then, using racquets manufactured by a company
called Ubuntu, they are unleashing blistering aces in the early stages
of a grueling five-set match on whose outcome hinges the survival of
our common humanity. Arthur Ashe, the best global ambassador tennis
ever had, whose myriad causes included education, apartheid, racism,
poverty, disease and AIDS, put it best when he said: “I could never
live with myself if I elected to live without a humane purpose, without
trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that
perhaps the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others.”
Roger still has a long way
before he can fill Ashe’s giant humanitarian shoes, and he knows that
one swallow doesn’t make a summer. But he also knows that a journey of
a thousand miles begins with one step. He took that important first
step by visiting New Brighton, then a week later took another by
organizing the ATP All-Star Rally for Relief exhibition at Indian
Wells. Who knows how many such steps this young ambassador will take on
behalf of our common humanity, given the fact that his dazzling career
has only just begun?
Responding to a comment I
made about the devastation being wreaked in Africa by AIDS, which
claimed Ashe’s life in 1992 after he contracted the virus from a blood
transfusion following heart surgery, Roger nodded solemnly. “It’s like
tsunamis happening every day and no one notices.” He couldn’t be more
right. AIDS is threatening to wipe out an entire continent while much
of the world looks on with surreal indifference. But Roger has noticed.
Prior to the conclusion of the all-star exhibition, which raised more
than $30,000 for UNICEF, Roger said, “It is for a good cause and it
should even go beyond tonight.” To ensure it did, an event borne of
Roger’s Ubuntu resulted in an ongoing global partnership between the
ATP and UNICEF. Fittingly, the partnership is called ACE — Assisting
Children Everywhere.
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