{"id":10750,"date":"2025-07-20T15:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T15:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10750\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T15:18:12","slug":"i-was-denied-my-roger-federer-dream-before-quitting-tennis-to-study-real-estate-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10750\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I was denied my Roger Federer dream before quitting tennis to study real estate’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011, he was two games away from a Wimbledon<\/a> showdown with Roger Federer<\/a> on Centre Court and took on Novak Djokovic<\/a> at Flushing Meadows. However, by the following year, Conor Niland had retired and was pursuing a career in commercial property.<\/p>\n

The story of the Irish journeyman is a brutal reminder that tennis isn\u2019t all about marquee names, rising prize money, and royal boxes. Having actually beaten Federer at junior level, the Swiss maestro went on to win 20 Grand Slam titles and cement himself as an all-time great of the sport, while Niland reached a high of world No.129. However, the two came so close to famously meeting again at SW19.<\/p>\n

Having finally made the main draw, Niland was 4-1 up on Frenchman Adrian Mannarino in the deciding fifth set, with the icon awaiting the winner in round two. However, the Birmingham-born player contrived to blow a double break and miss out on the match he craved.<\/p>\n

Two months later, he made it into the US Open<\/a> draw and was seemingly given another dream opportunity against Djokovic. However, he was plagued by food poisoning from the start, and was forced to retire when trailing 6-0 5-1.<\/p>\n

The following season, the Davis Cup player walked away from the sport due to a crippling hip injury. He has since made light of his cruel luck, and his award-winning autobiography, The Racket, was hailed as a true depiction of what life is like for players who fall short of the elite.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Sun, Niland admitted his Wimbledon<\/a> slip-up still haunts him, saying: \u201cI sometimes felt like tennis hated me. I think about the Mannarino match that I lost at Wimbledon<\/a> every day more or less.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was impossible to avoid the fact we were playing for Centre Court against Roger Federer<\/a>. Obviously, I think that impacted me not being able to close out the match. To have played Federer at Wimbledon<\/a> would really get people’s attention but the fact I lost that match has made the book a lot more interesting and changed the whole narrative of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niland did at least win three ATP<\/a> Challenger titles and five ITF Futures tournaments in his career, during which he admitted to \u201cbouncing from one country to the next\u201d to fund his career. At 43, he remains involved with the Ireland Davis Cup set-up, but tennis is no longer his priority.<\/p>\n

He is an Associate Director of Retail and Leisure at Cushman & Wakefield, one of the world\u2019s largest real estate services firms. He explained that he completed a Master\u2019s in real estate after his career ended and now works in the landlord and tenant representation side of the business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2011, he was two games away from a Wimbledon showdown with Roger Federer on Centre Court and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,10543,10546,10547,10545,10544,2083,2189,82,593,614],"class_list":{"0":"post-10750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-conor-niland","11":"tag-conor-niland-book","12":"tag-conor-niland-djokovic","13":"tag-conor-niland-federer","14":"tag-conor-niland-wimbledon","15":"tag-novak-djokovic","16":"tag-roger-federer","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-tennis","19":"tag-wimbledon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}