Federer and Chiudinelli – Mates Since Eight, But Apart For Davis Cup In Alabama

Roger Federer is, of course, not on the Swiss Davis Cup team that will face the United States this week in Birmingham, Alabama. One player who is on the Swiss squad is Marco Chiudinelli, who is one of Federer’s closest childhood friends and rivals since the two were eight years old. Marco and Roger played with each other with Marco – and many other players – frequently beating the future five-time Wimbledon. In this exclusive excerpt from the book THE ROGER FEDERER STORY, QUEST FOR PERFECTION by Rene Stauffer ($24.95, New Chapter Press, www.rogerfedererbook.com), Chiudinelli talks about how Roger and he would frequently cry during and after competitive matches and goof around on the tennis and squash courts. Chiudinelli was in fact the final-round victim in Roger’s first ever Swiss national junior title in the 12-and-under category. The following is the second chapter of THE ROGER FEDERER STORY, QUEST FOR PERFECTION entitled “A Boy Discovers Tennis.”

Roger Federer’s first idol was Boris Becker. He was four years old when Becker won his first Wimbledon title in 1985 and Germany, subsequently, came down with collective tennis fever following the epic win by their native son. Roger cried bitterly in 1988 and in 1990 when Becker lost Wimbledon finals to Stefan Edberg. Federer the boy watched tennis matches on television for hours on end. His mother was amazed at the details he retained.

“I liked tennis the best of all sports,” Roger said looking back. “It was always exciting and winning or losing was always in my hands.” He quickly became the best in his age group just after entering school and was allowed to participate in special training sessions three times a week at a loose union of tennis clubs in Basel and its environs. It was at these special training sessions where he met Marco Chiudinelli, another talented youth a month younger than him also from Münchenstein. The two became friends and spent considerable time together off the tennis court.

After training, the two boys sometimes played squash with their tennis racquets and played table tennis and soccer against each other. Their parents both jogged and bicycled together. When a region-wide top tennis group was formed, Roger and Marco, both eight-years-old, became members of the group, despite playing at different clubs-Federer at the Old Boys Tennis Club, where training conditions were better for him than at the Ciba Tennis Club in Allschwil, and Chiudinelli at the Basel Lawn Tennis Club.

“It was pretty loud when we were in training,” Chiudinelli recollected. “We talked more than we trained. Training didn’t seem too important to us. We just wanted to have a good time and we goofed around a lot. One of us was frequently kicked off the court.”

Federer and Chiudinelli soon became the black sheep of the group and their parents were angry to discover that one or the other was forced to sit on the sidelines and watch half of the practice sessions for disciplinary reasons.

“Roger lost to practically everybody in training,” said Chiudinelli. “He was the only one that I beat, but the difference was enormous. When it came down to business, he could flip a switch and become a completely different person. I admired that about him. I could give him a thrashing in training but when we played at a tournament a day later, he gave me a thrashing. Even back then he was a real competitor.”

The two eight-year-olds played against each other for the first time at an official event at a tournament called “The Bambino Cup” in Arlesheim. “Back then we only played one long set of up to nine games,” Chiudinelli explained. “Things weren’t going well for me at the beginning. I was behind 2-5 and I started to cry. We cried a lot back then even during the matches. Roger came up to me and tried to comfort me when we switched sides. He told me everything would be all right, and in fact, things did get better. I took the lead 7-6 and noticed that the tide had turned. Then he began to cry and I ran up to him to give him encouragement and things went better for him. It was the only time that I could beat him.”

Roger trained with Adolf Kacovsky, a tennis coach at The Old Boys Tennis Club who everybody called “Seppli.” Like many of his fellow Czechs during the “Prague Spring” in 1968, Kacovsky fled Czechoslovakia and the Russian tanks that rolled into the Czech capital to quell the rebellion. He arrived in Basel one year later, via Tunisia, where he was the club’s head professional until 1996.

“I noticed right away that this guy was a natural talent,” said Kacovsky of Federer. “He was born with a racquet in his hand.” Federer was only given group lessons at first but soon received special one-on-one attention. “The club and I quickly noticed that he was enormously talented,” Kacovsky said. “We began giving him private lessons that were partly funded by the club. Roger was a quick learner. When you wanted to teach him something new, he was able to pick it up after three or four tries, while others in the group needed weeks.”

The star pupil was not only talented and in love with hitting the ball but also ambitious. Kacovsky recounted that Roger always said that he wanted to become the best in the world. “People just laughed at him, including me,” he said. “I thought that he would perhaps become the best player in Switzerland or Europe but not the best in the world. He had it in his head and he worked at it.”

However, Roger’s tournament career at the club began with a fiasco. In his first tournament competition at the age of eight, he lost his first serious competition 6-0, 6-0, although, according to his own estimation, he didn’t play all that badly. Not surprisingly, Federer cried after the loss.

“His opponent was much bigger,” said Kacovsky. “He was also very nervous in his first game where the match really counted.”

Roger constantly sought out people to practice with and if he found no one, he hit balls against the wall, over and over for hours. At age 11, the Swiss tennis magazine Smash first became interested in him. A small article appeared about the young Federer in October, 1992 after he reached the semifinals at the Basel Youth Cup, a gateway series to competitive tennis. Although Roger was improving rapidly, he still suffered many bitter defeats. Dany Schnyder, the younger brother of the later top women’s player Patty Schnyder, became his arch rival and his biggest junior adversary. “I tried everything but it didn’t make a difference,” Roger recollected. “I always lost and lost decisively.”

Schnyder, six months older than Roger, grew up in the neighboring vil­lage of Bottmingen and has fond recollections of his junior duels with Roger. “We played against each other 17 times between the ages of eight and 12,” he said. “I won eight of the first nine matches but lost the last eight matches. Roger always played aggressively. I kept the ball in the court for the most part. Everything went wrong for him at the beginning. His gambles didn’t pay off. That’s probably why I won. But then suddenly his shots stayed in.”

“I was surprised to see Roger suddenly storm to the top,” said Schnyder, who eventually gave up his tennis career to pursue academics. “One noticed that he had good strokes at 11 or 12, but I never would have thought that he would become the No. 1 player in the world. I think what he’s accomplished is great-but he’s not an idol, a world star or a super hero for me. Whenever we see each other, he’s still the same guy as when we first met.”

Schnyder also corroborated the fact that Federer didn’t take practice matches nearly as seriously as tournament matches. “When things counted, he could always rise to the occasion,” he said. Roger himself was aware that his performances in practice matches had not dispelled all doubts. “I was conscientious but I didn’t like to train,” he said years later. “My parents always said, ‘Start training better,’ but I often had problems getting motivated. I was a match player.”

Negative emotions also often took control of him on the court. “When things weren’t going the way he wanted, he would curse and toss his racquet,” Kacosvky explained. “It was so bad, I had to intervene sometimes.”

“I was constantly cursing and tossing my racquet around,” said Federer. “It was bad. My parents were embarrassed and they told me to stop it or they wouldn’t come along with me to my tournaments anymore. I had to calm down but that was an extremely long process. I believe that I was looking for perfection too early.”

In 1993 at the age of 11, Roger won his first Swiss national title, defeating Chiudinelli in Lucerne in the final of the Swiss 12-and-under indoor championships. Six months later, he defeated Schnyder in the final of the Swiss 12-and-under outdoor chamionships in Bellinzona. Both tournament victories were very important to the developing Federer. “I thought, ‘Aha! I can compete,’” he said. “I can do it.”

Michael Lammer from Zürich, a year younger than Federer, remembered at that time that Federer was still a work in progress. “You could see early on that he was a talent, but at this age, it’s hard to say that a new star is being born,” said Lammer. “At the beginning, he still had problems with his backhand because he played it single-handedly and he didn’t have that much power. That’s why he sliced a lot, but his forehand was complete by then.”

Their duels, said Lammer, were explosive. “It was chaotic sometimes,” he said. “We played about five or six times before we were 14-years-old. He was very emotional. Our games were very even but he gained strength at the de­cisive moment because he was instinctively doing the right thing. That’s why I could never beat him.”

Roger was still playing club soccer in addition to tennis, but the many practice sessions in the two sports were too hard to coordinate. So, at age 12, he decided to give up soccer and concentrate on tennis. The choice wasn’t difficult for him although his soccer coaches also confirmed that he was a great talent. “I scored a few goals in soccer but I didn’t do anything especially well,” said Roger. “We won some regional tournaments but I had already won a national title in tennis.”

His great talent lay not in his feet but in his right hand.

Roger’s quest for perfection also led to his decision to give preference to tennis over soccer-not because he was a loner, but in the collective setting of a soccer team, Federer was simply too dependent upon his teammates. As a soccer player, he not only had to deal with his own imperfections but also with those of his fellow players. This wasn’t for him in the long run. He had enough to do fuming over his own mistakes.

After his ninth birthday, Federer sometimes trained at the Old Boys Tennis Club with Peter Carter, a young assistant instructor. The Australian, who wanted everybody to call him Peter whether they were housewives or bank directors, was a sympathetic, serious man with straight, blonde hair that fell uncombed across his forehead. He had large blue eyes and a soft voice. He was born in 1964 in Nuriootpa, a small city with 40 wine producers in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. As a member of the Australian Sports Institute, he became a tennis professional but was not even a journeyman player, achieving a career-high ranking of No. 173.

In 1984, Carter played the Swiss satellite circuit, a tournament series at the lowest professional level, and despite not meeting with much success, his hiatus in Switzerland proved fateful. The Old Boys Tennis Club asked him if he wanted to play with on their national “league tennis” B-level club team. Carter agreed. Soon he was not only playing for the team, but was also active as club’s coach and by the beginning of the 1990s, his workload was constantly increasing.

The Old Boys Tennis Club offered him a full-time coaching position in 1993 to build a mentoring program for the young tennis players. Carter accepted and he was now training a group that included a 12-year-old Federer. “Peter was not only an ideal coach for Roger but also a good friend,” Seppli Kacovsky recollected. “He was also an excellent instructor and psychologist.”

“When I first saw him,” Carter once said of the future world No. 1, “Roger hardly came up to the net. His talent was instantly visible. Roger could do a lot with the ball and the racquet at a very young age. He was playful and especially wanted to have his fun.” Federer, he said, was very natural and was coordinated in every respect. “He had a great feel for the ball and he always had a very good forehand,” said Carter. “He learned with extraordinary speed and ease, including things that he had seen Boris Becker or Pete Sampras do on TV. He always made progress.”

When Roger was 13, his dream became an obsession-he wanted to become the No. 1 player in Switzerland and then reach the top 100 in the world rankings. His playing level and ranking allowed him to play in international junior competitions. In the meantime, he was no longer as much a Boris Becker fan but became an enthusiast of Stefan Edberg, the Swedish rival of Becker.

The idea to send Roger to the Swiss National Tennis Center in the Swiss city of Ecublens came about in winter 1994/1995. His parents were satisfied with Peter Carter and the training conditions but the National Tennis Center mentoring program-or the “Tennis Etudes” program-was funded by the Swiss Tennis Federation and thus was financially attractive to the Federers.

Eight boys and four girls trained at the National Tennis Center on Lake Geneva, where qualified coaches were available to them. The students had the option of living with guest families and could attend public schools where they were exempt from certain subjects. One of the program’s central figures was Pierre Paganini who, like Peter Carter, would play a central role in Federer’s career. A former decathlon athlete and college-trained sports teacher, Paganini was the endurance trainer and administrative head at Ecublens.

When his parents asked Roger if he was interested going to Ecublens, he objected. However, they were even more astounded to later read their son’s statement in a tennis magazine of his intention to graduate from the acad­emy. In March of 1995, Federer went as one of 15 candidates to Lake Geneva to take the entrance examination that included a 12-minute run, an endur­ance test, demonstrations of his skills on the court and a test match. Federer quickly convinced Pierre Paganini and Christophe Freyss, the national coach, that he was worthy of entry. They informed him while he was still in Ecublens that he passed the entrance examination.