The first time he cried after a big win, Roger Federer says he didn’t understand what was happening.
It was 2001 at Wimbledon, and he’d just dethroned the great Pete Sampras on his Centre Court debut.
“I go to my knees, (then) I shake hands with Pete and he’s my hero … and these emotions came all over me,” he told CNN Sports. “And I was like, ‘What is going on?’ This is not who I am normally.”
From that moment until his tearful farewell in 2022, Federer carved out one of the most remarkable careers in tennis history and became arguably the most famous crier in sports.
This weekend the Swiss superstar is being inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and it sounds like he’s expecting the waterworks to return.
