A night with Roger Federer.
Roger FedererIllustration by Tom Bachtell

Sometime last month, on a losing streak and looking for answers, Roger Federer decided that what he needed was a new tennis racquet. Having won sixteen Grand Slam tennis tournaments in his twenties, more than anyone in history, Federer in his thirties had come up with just a single title, at last year’s Wimbledon. Stiffer competition presented a problem, but time had also taken its toll—at thirty-two, Federer qualifies as young in practically every profession except the one he chose—and balls that he once slapped back with ease were now skipping out of reach. The new racquet, a Wilson prototype painted all black, was bigger, offering an increased margin of error. In tennis circles, the switch seemed to mark an epochal shift: Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player of all time, had just admitted that he needed help.

“I feel young,” Federer said last week, as he headed into his fourteenth U.S. Open, a tournament that he won five consecutive times, between 2004 and 2008, but hasn’t since. He was at the Gansevoort Park Hotel, sitting on a couch in an eleventh-floor suite outfitted with a Foosball table, which he hadn’t used. “I’m not very good,” he said. “It’s more the French guys that are good at that.” He’d squeezed in two hours of practice in Arthur Ashe Stadium that morning, before changing into a black suit with peak lapels, and a blue checked shirt unbuttoned to his chest. His hair had recently been trimmed; gone is the youthful ponytail. (For a sobering reminder of the Internet’s permanence, Google “young Roger Federer.”) “By now, I pick my own clothes,” he said, claiming one benefit of getting older. “I had many things wrong in the beginning.”

That was true off the court, but on it Federer’s game was so polished that his acolytes often described him as an artist; now they feared this bigger, less precise racquet as an aesthetic threat. (Could Picasso still paint with a wider brush? Could Baryshnikov dance in hiking boots?) Federer acknowledged that his game is visually appealing—he prefers “showman” to “artist”—but insisted that this is incidental. “I don’t purposely try to make it look graceful or classy,” he said. “But because I have that—can you say vintage style? Old-school tennis, with the one-handed backhand. I like to use my slice. The way I move, people really like it. I’m happy that it pleases the people’s eye—let’s put it that way.”

With the Open still a week away, and his four-year-old twin daughters with a babysitter, Federer had decided to allow himself a night out. “I can do probably two glasses of champagne,” he said, before heading to a party at Chelsea Piers, thrown by Moët & Chandon, one of several top-shelf brands—Mercedes, Lindt chocolate—that have made him among the world’s best-compensated pitchmen. He found Mirka, his wife, waiting on the curb. She brushed off his shoulders and tugged his collar in preparation for the red carpet. “I should have brought sunglasses,” he said, as he faced a gantlet of photographers.

Inside, Federer settled into a corner sofa next to Anna Wintour, his friend and style adviser, who wore a pink, tea-length dress. Marion Bartoli, this year’s Wimbledon champion, who wore a white dress, was dancing giddily to a remixed Red Hot Chili Peppers song. “He has to save himself for the Open,” Bartoli said, explaining why Federer wasn’t dancing along with her. Bartoli no longer had to save herself for anything: four years Federer’s junior, she had retired a week earlier. “When he feels it,” she said, upon being asked what advice she might give Federer on when to hang it up. She then took a sip of champagne and went back to dancing.

So how’s that new racquet working out? Well, after just five matches, Federer gave it up and went back to his old one. No luck with that, either: he played Rafael Nadal at a tournament in Cincinnati, and lost for the third straight time. Federer enters the Open ranked No. 7 in the world, his lowest position since he was twenty-one years old. New racquets and new strings, he said, had conspired to rob him of his competitive advantage. “I think I have to play differently today because of the game itself, not because of my age,” he had said, at the Gansevoort. “I feel like I’m moving like a youngster. Mentally, I’m young.” And retirement? He’s not yet feeling it. “After all the hard work, after ten years, to just say, ‘All right, see ya later’? ” he said. “That’s not gonna work for me.” ♦