Quit while ahead or wait ’til the bitter end? The other challenge in tennis: retiring

Joni was right: You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Here we are: another Australian Open; 256 men and women vying for the singles titles. Some big names among them. New names, too, that may yet become familiar. But there are also holes in the draw once filled by players so well known that only their first names are necessary: Roger, Serena, Ash. All missing.

The last time none of them participated was 1997. Ash has a good excuse; she was just nine months old. At last year’s event, missed by both Roger and Serena (with 13 Australian Open singles titles between them), Ash had her hot summer’s night: victory in the final to make her the first Australian singles champion since 1978, when Chris O’Neil won. Her friend and mentor, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, presented the Cup. Then, two months later, came the announcement as surprising as one of her drop shots: she was retiring.

Barty’s last shot in competitive tennis was a forehand winner. She went out a champion, just as Pete Sampras managed in 2002. After being runner-up the previous two years in New York, then suffering the ignominy of a second-round exit at Wimbledon, Sampras defeated rival Andre Agassi in the US Open final. He went away, thought about things, had a desultory practice session or two, then knew for sure: he was done. Hitting the high note was the perfect end to his aria.

Few people in any sport get to bow out that way. Roger Federer’s last shot in Melbourne was a backhand into the net, surrendering a semi-final to nemesis Novak Djokovic in 2020. The six-time champion, an annual visitor to Melbourne since 1998, started well, peeling off backhand winners for the highlight reel. He even served for the first set, but once Djokovic broke back there was a sad inevitability to the contest. Federer’s movement, once sublime, was restricted by injuries. He left the stadium, to applause, a loser. “Today was horrible,” he said later. “Nice entrance, nice send-off and in between one to forget.”

Cue Leonard Cohen: Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

One year later, Serena Williams’ Australian Open farewell was spookily similar: another semi-final, another backhand into the net to seal a straight-sets loss to the eventual champion (Naomi Osaka). Like Federer, Williams left the court to an ovation. She put her hand on her heart to acknowledge it. In her media conference, asked if that was a goodbye gesture, she said: “I don’t know. If I ever say farewell I wouldn’t tell anyone.” She managed a rueful laugh, realising how nonsensical her statement was. Asked by a tennis commentator if she’d just had a bad day, she began, “I don’t know … ” before her eyes moistened. With an abrupt “I’m done”, she walked out.

How different things seemed in 2017, when Williams and then Federer won the singles titles – as they’d already done in 2007 and 2010. In 2018, Federer won again, a year after Williams’ seventh and last Australian crown. And then, no more …

The retirements of Federer and Williams have sparked endless debate about their respective places in tennis. Are they GOATs: the greatest of all time? Statistics alone say no: both Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have more major titles than Federer’s 20; Williams never quite caught Margaret Court’s 24. But sport is not just about numbers. Differences in equipment and opposition make comparisons across eras inconclusive. Besides, how do you assess greatness? If the criteria include grace, competitiveness, global impact and the breaking down of barriers, well, these factors trump statistics. And perhaps there are subdivisions of the acronym: do Roger Federer’s eight Wimbledon titles make him the Grass GOAT? Discuss.

One thing both Williams sisters and Federer share is an astonishing longevity in tennis. This is where their absence will be felt most. Consider some of their vanquished opponents in Australian Open finals: Lindsay Davenport (2005) retired in 2010; Dinara Safina (2009) bowed out in 2014. In another neat twist, Safina’s big brother Marat Safin was runner-up when Federer won his first Australian title in 2004: he retired in 2009. In 2007, Roger’s runner-up was the Chilean Fernando Gonzalez, out in 2012.

Adversaries came and went; Roger and Serena kept rolling on. Their pro careers spanned 24 and 27 years respectively, while Serena’s sister Venus has passed 28. Barty, by contrast, had a 12-year career, including a two-year time out. Pat Rafter, winner of two US Opens and twice a Wimbledon runner-up, was done and dusted in 11 years. After all those Australian Opens, Roger and Serena didn’t get the send-offs they deserved in the stadium named after Rod Laver, winner of three Australian titles in nine attempts between 1956 and 1971.

Then again, farewells are tricky things. Just ask Scot Andy Murray. Murray arrived in Australia in January 2019 in a mood that seemed gloomy even for the Eeyore of tennis. A persistent and painful hip problem caused him to contemplate publicly the possibility of retirement.

So when he lost a long, gruelling, first-round match on centre court, he was treated to a five-star farewell. A video tribute played on the big screen, with both male and female players wishing him well and celebrating his achievements. Murray watched all this stony-faced while, in his supporters’ box, Mum Judy filmed proceedings and big brother Jamie looked a bit bemused. He, like Andy, who contested his first Australian Open in 2006, knew the retirement talk had been overdone. An operation was necessary; so, too, a lengthy period of rehab. But the possibility of a comeback had always been left open. And guess what? Four years later, Andy grinds on, a bit like the worker who returns to the office two months after colleagues have chipped in for a present.

Few players get to say goodbye. Sampras, who held most records before Federer started breaking them, left Melbourne as a fourth-round loser in 2002. Andre Agassi never returned after Federer blitzed him in a quarter-final three years later. The quarters were also as far as Martina Navratilova, a three-time Open winner, got in 1989. And when Ash’s great mate Evonne Goolagong Cawley, a four-time champion, left the court after a second-round defeat at Kooyong in 1982, few guessed she wouldn’t be back, swinging that racquet like a wand.

So shed no tears for Roger and Serena. They both got appropriately lachrymose send-offs: Serena on court at the US Open in September, where she acknowledged almost everyone but the player who’d just defeated her, Ajla Tomljanovic; Federer later the same month at the Laver Cup in London, playing his last competitive match alongside his great rival Nadal. Throughout his career, the Swiss had been a serial blubberer. He cried when he won; cried when he lost. This time, the farewells also caused Rafa to sob, although behind the Spanish sniffles he might have been thinking: “Oh Roger, this is un poco embarrassing …”

If farewells are problematic, it’s even harder to spot arrivals; to identify stars on the way up. In time, we might look back on this year’s Open as representing the breakthrough of players previously overlooked. But whom? After all, nobody took much notice when a pimply Swiss teenager named Roger Federer lost in the first round of qualifying in 1999. Interest in Serena the previous year (when she made it into the second round) was mostly as Venus’s little sister.

In 2012, a first-round defeat offered few clues to Ash Barty’s future career. Sometimes you get it right. Watching Venus’s debut at the US Open in September 1997, I wrote, “It seems like she’s been the next big thing for many of her 17 years.” When she made the semi-finals, I shamelessly borrowed from Bob Dylan: She serves just like a woman. She smashes just like a woman. But when she wins, she shakes her beads just like a little girl.

But sometimes I’ve got it horribly wrong. Nadal was also 17 when he played Lleyton Hewitt in the third round at his first Australian Open in 2004. Hewitt, a former Wimbledon and US champion, won in straight sets, which wasn’t surprising. I decided the young Spaniard, then in his pirate pantaloons phase, might do okay if he improved his serve. I didn’t tip him to win 22 major titles, including a pair of Australian Opens.

Worse, in 2004 I wrote that because Nadal was Spanish and Federer Swiss, “they are never going to have anywhere near the level of support enjoyed by any Australians in action”. Wrong again. When John Millman pushed Federer to five sets in Melbourne in 2020, he must have wondered which one of them was the local hero.

Predictions are risky. This could be the Open in which Casper Ruud and Iga Swiatek claim their first Australian crowns. Or it could be an outsider’s year, as it was in 2002 when unfancied Swede Thomas Johansson toppled Safin in the final. You never know. But sometimes, if you’re lucky, you catch moments that later are significant. The entrance of the Next Big Thing. Or the last glimpse of a falling star.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.