"Tennis still brings passion and pleasure to me" - Federer shuts down retirement talk

Roger Federer is currently preparing for the clay swing in Geneva but his plans for 2021 include the Olympics where he would like to win a medal for his country.

The tennis legend has made a return to tennis earlier this year in Doha but decided to skip over the first part of the clay season. He will make his clay season debut at the Geneva Open next week before taking part in the Roland Garros. He is grateful he can do that underlining the new ranking system as being really helpful:

“The only help I might have had is the ranking. I should be 800th because I didn’t play. I’m still Top 8. Okay, that’s good for being seeded. But it doesn’t change anything for me: if my knee isn’t 100 percent, if I’m not 100 percent physically, I know I won’t be good enough.”

The Swiss ace is hoping to play at the Olympics which have been barely talked about lately:

“We barely hear about them at the moment. They should happen. I heard that a lot of people were against the games in Tokyo. Two percent of the Japanese population seem vaccinated. I’m between two schools. I would be so happy to play and win a medal for Switzerland. But if it can’t happen because of the situation, I will be the first to understand it. "

For Federer, there are no plans of retirement yet. Speaking about tennis in general he said:

“Tennis still brings passion and pleasure to me. Tennis missed me. Tournaments direction, fans, media, they are my second family. It’s difficult to leave that. The knee and the family will drive that. The idea is to come back, see at what level, and then see how I can handle stress and everything. No plan at the moment.”