MELBOURNE, Australia — The most anticipated practice session of the 2026 Australian Open was for a player three-and-a-half years removed from tennis.
Friday afternoon in Melbourne, Rod Laver Arena was teeming with fans. No seats were available in the lower bowl, nor the bottom of the upper bowl. Latecomers in search of a view had to take their chances from the very top of the stadium, squinting to see the players dancing on the court below.
Even when watching a tame 45-minute session with Norway’s Casper Ruud ahead of a legends’ doubles with Pat Rafter, Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt Saturday, people can’t get enough of Roger Federer.
Federer, 44, hasn’t been a serious threat in a singles draw for six years. He has been distant from tennis since hanging up his racket, and in that time, new stars have exploded into prominence and popularity. The sport has had every reason and opportunity to move on from its beloved Swiss maestro, were it capable of doing so. But Federer’s return to Melbourne has momentarily vaulted tennis back into the past.
Even the moderator for Federer’s news conference the previous day took on the role of a superfan, asking the 20-time major champion nine consecutive questions and leaving time for just five queries from the couple of dozen journalists in the room.
Roger Federer’s choice of Melbourne for his return was perhaps a surprise. (Graham Denholm / Getty Images)
Like the demand for his tennis, the demand for his voice is strong: more journalists attended his press conference than those of Carlos Alcaraz, Aryna Sabalenka, Jannik Sinner, or Naomi Osaka. After Federer escaped the clutches of moderator and media, a crowd of fans assembled below an overhanging balcony, taking pictures of him doing his next interview. People still care deeply about what Roger Federer says, more so than most active top tennis players.
This came into sharp relief last October, when his misguided belief that tournament directors are slowing down their courts to favor Jannik Sinner and Alcaraz started a tennis conspiracy theory which data on court speed contradicts. He was on the other side of the dynamic Thursday, when his docile explanation of how Grigor Dimitrov’s performance against Sinner at Wimbledon last year lent him a window into how he would play the Italian led to a slew of outrage from too-online fans, who interpreted “this is how I would play” as “this is how I would win.” (As if a historically talented and successful player believing he would beat anybody is a crime.)
After all, not everyone loves Federer.
The Swiss dominated the big tournaments of the mid-2000s, which would earn anybody plaudits, but his unique blend of style and grace caused a significant portion of the tennis world to anoint him as the sport’s Jesus, masking his dynamism, physicality, and weaknesses in the process. Federer’s light jokes in the Melbourne news conference drew automatic laughs from many in attendance, which one journalist found exasperating. They said that they didn’t miss every single Federer attempt at humor scoring with the audience in the press room: “He’s not that funny.”
The fans in attendance for Federer’s practice included few doubters, even a white-haired couple who asked who was playing (at the word “Federer,” they clapped happily). Federer-Ruud was low-octane even by the standards of a practice, limiting rallies of any intensity to the final few minutes. But it still featured enough blinks of vintage Federer for the casual fan, if not the terminally nostalgic.
Federer pulled Ruud to net with a drop shot, then spun a crosscourt forehand beyond his reach. He returned a first serve with his trademark chip return. He tried to snap a backhand down the line that caught the tape and fell back over to his side, but his beloved one-handed stroke was still emphatic enough to draw a disappointed “ooh” from the crowd.
That he chose Melbourne as the site of something of a reentry into tennis is in part a surprise, because relative to his bodies of work at the other majors, Federer’s Australian Open career defies a simple narrative. The Swiss became synonymous with Wimbledon almost immediately after winning it in 2003. He struggled mightily to win the French Open until breaking through in 2009. At the U.S. Open, he went through both heaven and hell, never winning another title after claiming five in a row during the mid-aughts.
Melbourne is home to a couple of Federer’s greatest triumphs, but his most common result at the tournament is a semifinals loss, of which he had eight, and many of his defeats are more memorable than the six titles. There was the 2009 final that left him in tears, in which Federer played at a higher base level than Rafael Nadal for four sets, but won just two before crumbling in the fifth. There was the 2011 semifinal against Djokovic, lost in three tight sets, that essentially marked the end of his status as favorite in that rivalry.
And there was the 2019 fourth-rounder against Stefanos Tsitsipas, in which Federer won the first set but finished a woeful 0/12 on break points and lost in four. Federer’s most defined imprint on the Australian Open remains that wondrous, improbable 2017 triumph, in which he snatched victory from what looked like the jaws of yet another defeat to Nadal. His second-deepest might be unintentionally granting the tournament its enduring nickname: “The Happy Slam.”
Federer and Ruud played a tiebreak to round out their practice session, which Federer won. He recycled several of his soundbites from his news conference during his on-court interview; to his credit, he seems as if he’d be happy answering the same questions forever. As he talked, fans on the right flank of the stadium lowered a dense mass of balls, shirts, and flags on strings for Federer to sign.
Federer signed, and signed, and signed. Gradually, the forest of memorabilia began to thin out, though bare objects kept popping up in place of those Federer had already scribbled on. But he took his leave before they disappeared entirely, waving with the certainty of someone who knew he had so many fans that he could never get to them all.
