It has been a 25-year journey at Wimbledon for Roger Federer, and as he entered the Royal Box this week as a retiree in his cream-colored suit to a standing ovation that lasted for nearly two minutes, I kept flashing back to his first appearance in that place of pomp and protocol in 1998.
He was the newly minted boys champion and had just won his title over Irakli Labadze, a streaky Georgian, on a show court that no longer exists: No. 2 Court, known as The Graveyard Court because it was the site of so many upsets.
But Federer, as tradition dictated, was invited into the inner sanctum of Centre Court’s Royal Box to receive his trophy. He climbed the stairs in tennis whites as baggy as those worn by his tennis role model Pete Sampras, who had just won another men’s title. Federer was greeted warmly by the crowd and by the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the royals who used to oversee the handing out of the gilded loot before Kate, the Princess of Wales, took over that role.
Bill Threlfall, commenting on the championships for the BBC, observed the 16-year-old Federer with his trophy and said, “We’ll be seeing him again.”
But winning the boys’ trophy is no guarantee of that, as I wrote in The Master, my biography of Federer.