The Federer Model: Life Lessons from the Tennis Icon

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

With Roger Federer announcing his retirement following this weekend’s Laver Cup in London, most sports fans thoughts will immediately go to his 20 Grand Slam Titles (3rd most all-time) and his storied rivalries with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. But for writer David Epstein, Federer represents something much bigger–a model for how to develop athletes, raise our kids, and discover our individual talents. Rather than specializing in one sport early on, like Tiger Woods did with golf, Federer played many different sports as a child, and didn’t focus on tennis seriously until later. Epstein explains why this model of development works, why it might be more effective than the often-cited 10,000 hours model…and why it made Roger Federer into the dominant athlete he is today. You can find more of David Epstein’s work through his free Range Widely newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I love being out on court, I love playing in cigars and travelling.
0:09.6	I never really felt it was that hard for me to do.
0:14.1	I loved winning, learned from losing, it was all perfect.
0:17.9	I love my career from every angle.
0:22.0	And that's the better part, the sweet part was that I know everybody has to do it at one
0:26.8	point, everybody has to leave the game and it's been a great, great journey and I'm really
0:32.7	grateful.
0:38.4	Legacy is a deeply overused word in sports.
0:42.4	And whenever an all-time great like Roger Federer announces his retirement as he just
0:47.1	heard, it feels like we're obligated to define what his legacy is.
0:53.2	And so we count, right? We count the major championships, 20, the third most all-time,
0:59.8	or we wax poetic about what David Foster Wallace called, Federer Moments.
1:06.0	Those memories, those jaw-dropping moments of athletic transcendence that only someone
1:11.7	like Roger Federer could give us.
1:14.8	But we want to do something a little different.
1:19.1	So today, as 41-year-old Roger Federer waves goodbye at the Laver Cup this weekend, we
1:25.6	ask David Epstein, the best sports science writer in America, to give us his perspective
1:30.8	on what he calls the Federer model and why it actually applies to all of us.
1:39.4	I'm Pablo Torre, it's Thursday, September 22nd.
1:44.1	This is ESPN Daily.
1:51.3	David Epstein, when Roger Federer announced he was retiring, a lot of people thought of
1:56.4	Raffin and Doll or Novak Jokovic, his colleagues, his competitors at the very top of tennis,
	...

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