“The Great Man” is how commentators invariably refer to Roger Federer in Melbourne. After watching him play there for 18 years, and win four titles, the Aussies honor this native of Switzerland as if he’s one of their own tennis legends.
Outside the press area in Melbourne Park, the most prominent photo is one of Rod Laver handing the winner’s trophy to a tearful Federer in 2007. “Roger is revered here,” Courtney Walsh, a sportswriter at The Australian told me. “As a colleague of mine said, ‘When Federer broke down in front of Laver a few years back, it was as if he had become one of us.”
Federer won his first Grand Slam match at the Australian Open, in 2000. Unfortunately, last year he also experienced his first major injury in Melbourne, when he turned his knee the wrong way while drawing a bath for his kids—that really is like “one of us.” The injury kept him off the tour for the last five months of 2016.
So it made sense that Federer, his knee now healed, would return in Australia. On Monday, the fans in Rod Laver Arena filled the seats and waited patiently for the Great Man to make his late-evening entrance. For a split-second, when they stood and cheered as he walked onto the court, Federer looked to be on the verge of tearing up again.