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The Swiss legend, who retired from tennis in 2022, paid tribute to the opponents, officials, fans, family and friends who had shared his career during a lengthy address that unfolded as a love letter to the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the greatest honours of my life,\u201d Federer said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey call this the Hall of Fame, but fame was never the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal was to spend my life doing something I love… with people who I love it as much as I do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Roger Federer thanks the audience during his induction ceremony at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026, in Newport, R.I. (AP Photo\/Charles Krupa)Source: AP<\/p>\n
In a light-hearted preamble, the eight-time Wimbledon champion totted up his career in some of his lesser-known statistical milestones.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot the obvious stats like the number of majors or number of weeks at number one,\u201d Federer said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m talking about the numbers that really paint a picture. Between 1998 and when I first went on the ATP tour, and when I retired in 2022, I wore more than 5,000 headbands. That\u2019s more than (Bjorn) Borg and (John) McEnroe combined.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if you think that\u2019s impressive, I wore probably over 7000 pairs of socks. That\u2019s probably twice as many as most of my opponents, because I doubled them up.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut really, there\u2019s no way to measure what it means to be here. It\u2019s hard to put it into words,\u201d Federer said, reflecting on his journey from being a 13-year-old ballboy at an ATP tournament in Basel to the pinnacle of tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really want to thank every ball kid who ever stood through my matches or all our matches, for that matter, for hours on end,\u201d Federer said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI see you. I thank you. I was you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Roger Federer is embraced by his wife Mirka during his induction ceremony at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026, in Newport, R.I. (AP Photo\/Charles Krupa)Source: AP<\/p>\n
Federer had to wipe away tears as he name-checked his idol Stefan Edberg, other tennis stars, family and support staff who had inspired him throughout his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need tissues and sunglasses and everything to protect me right now,\u201d he joked. \u201cThis is such a mess.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredible journey,\u201d Federer said. \u201cFor me, the International Tennis Hall of Fame provides a great opportunity to look back, but also to look ahead,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can tell, I\u2019m still writing my love letter to tennis. My time as a player is done, but tennis will always stand at the intersection of everything I care most about: my family, our friendships, the past 40 years, the future we\u2019re building. Tennis for me is responsible for it all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tearful Roger Federer was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Saturday, describing his formal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-873390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}