January 2018 was a hugely emotional day for Roger Federer. He had just won The Australian Open,
but more importantly, he had also broken the record in men’s tennis for winning 20 Grand Slams.
The fact that this happened in Australia was all the more fitting, as it was an Australian
coach who inspired Roger to get to where he is today. He was a man named Peter Carter,
who tragically died in 2002 and sadly never got to see his success.
‘Peter was a really important person in my life because I think if I can say thank you for my
technique today, it’s to Peter,’ Federer told CNN in an emotional interview in 2019. ‘Thanks to him
I have my entire technique and coolness. He wasn’t my first coach, but he was my real
coach. He knew me and my game and he always knew what was good for me.’
Although Peter met Roger when he was nine years old, Roger’s earliest experience of
tennis goes back a further six years to when he was just three years old.
His parents both worked at a pharmaceutical company and on weekends
would bring Roger and his elder sister Diana to the company’s private tennis court on weekends.
Roger grew up in Basel, which is part of the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
‘From an early age he was fascinated by balls and would want to play ball for hours on end;
even from age one-and-a-half,’ his mother Lynette told Bleacher Report.
His first unofficial tennis coach you could say was his mother, who was a gifted tennis player
in her own right and was even a member of the 1995 Swiss inter-club senior championship team.
His father talks of him having a very competitive nature at a very early age.
‘Defeats were a total disaster for him, even at board games,’
he said. ‘In general he was a nice guy, but when he didn’t like something he could get
pretty aggressive—dice and board-game pieces sometimes flew through the air.’
Roger played for his local Ciba tennis club, but by the age of eight his mother believed
that he had outgrown the place and needed better competition. She enlisted him at the Old Boys’
Club in Basel and was spotted early on by the legendary Czech tennis coach Seppli Kacovsky.
‘The club and I noticed right away that this guy was a natural talent and had been born
with a racquet in his hand,’ said Kacovsky. ‘So we began giving him private lessons,
which were partly funded by the club.’
We know Federer today as being very calm under pressure and gracious in defeat.
However, during this period of his life,
he had a temper worse than McEnroe and was dubbed ‘Little Satan’ by some of his coaches.
At ten years of age, he would begin training under his beloved coach Peter Carter
who helped convert ‘Little Satan’ into the cool and calm Federer we know today.
Carter grew up in the Australian town of Nuriootpa,
which was 50 miles away from Adelaide. He began training at the Peter Smith Academy in Adelaide,
and at 15 was asked to move in with the Smith family so he could focus more on
tennis. He would eventually break into the men’s 200 but was plagued by injuries.
He then traveled to Switzerland where he was involved in a skiing accident.
He took up a job as a tennis coach at the Old Boys’ Club in Basel simply to finance his playing
career. It was here where he spotted a nine year old Roger Federer and saw enormous potential.
According to Bleacher Report, between ages 10 and 14, Federer spent more time with Carter
than with his own family, working on a daily basis on all aspects of his game. Carter was
a stereotypical Aussie, who was very calm and had a great sense of humor. He told Roger that he was
simply wasting his energy on these tantrums during games and needed to be more calm and collective.
In this sense, Carter was a lot more than just a tennis coach.
We look at Federer today as a great role model on and off the pitch,
and it was Carter who helped change parts of Roger’s personality during his development years.
In his interview with CNN, Roger also said ‘’Peter was an incredibly inspirational and
important person in my life. He taught me respect for each person. I can never thank him enough.’
At 11 years of age, Federer reached the final of the 12-and-under Swiss national
junior championships. He then had to stop playing football, and focus only on tennis
if he wanted to make it. At 14, he had to make an even bigger decision: to move away from home.
He was invited to the Swiss National Tennis Academy at Ecublens near Lausanne.
This was a huge move for Roger as he was from the German-speaking part of Switzerland,
and was moving over to the French-speaking side. The only problem was, he didn’t speak any French.
The language barrier made these two years very difficult for Roger. He was away from his family
and found it difficult to make friends. In an interview with Tennis World USA, Federer said
‘I was with a family who was very nice to me, but I did not have any success in those first
couple of months. Then I got to know all the players and the coaches and learned the language,
which helped me. It helps me now as well; I can speak three languages perfectly.’
Carter was still in touch with people back in Australia and
would regularly tell his old coach Peter Smith about Roger.
Smith said ‘He was telling me about these talented kids but he realized quite early that there was an
exceptional one. He felt in his heart that Roger would not just be number one but the best player
anyone had ever seen. It wasn’t like Peter to talk like that but it was how he felt.’
Smith would tell Carter that he’s actually got a prodigy of his own who is the same
age as Roger - Llleyton Hewitt. Then in 1996, at the World Youth Cup in Zurich,
Hewitt would travel to Switzerland and play his first of many games against Roger.
As Hewitt’s coach, Smith could finally see them play together and find out which one was better.
The two young stars battled it out and Federer had a lucky win due to a poor line call.
‘He was so richly talented but he had these periods when he just seemed like he wasn’t
really involved,’ said Smith. ‘I sat with Carter through many of Roger’s matches.
Unbeknown to us, he was telling Roger, ‘You need to be more competitive like Lleyton’.’
He was gradually getting over that but it was Lleyton who, in 2001, won the first Grand Slam.’
Carter began coaching Federer again when he was 16 and Roger eventually became the junior
No 1. Then another ‘Peter’, Peter Lundgren, began partially coaching Federer in 1997.
Lundgen was the former coach of Marcelo Rios and two years later Federer made the incredibly
difficult decision of replacing Carter with Lundgren as his coach. However, Federer still
wanted Carter by his side. As the Swiss No 1, Federer used his position to instate Carter as
the captain of Switzerland's Davis Cup captain in 2001, despite not even having Swiss citizenship.
In 2001, Federer was 20 years old and destined for stardom. He was playing at Wimbledon and
just won a shock victory over one of his heroes - Pete Sampras. Sampras had won the past four
Wimbledons in a row, and it was a 19-year-old who stopped him from equaling Bjorn Bjorg’s
5 in a row record. Federer lost to Tim Henman in the quarter-finals, but his defeat of Sampras
showed just how capable he was. At the very least, he had gotten everybody’s attention.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan. Federer had the world at his feet and
there was no telling of what he would go on to achieve. Carter was equally happy seeing
Roger do well and was now on his honeymoon in South Africa. It was on this trip that tragedy
struck and Federer’s life would never be the same again [SLIGHT PAUSE HERE].
Carter and his Safari driver were involved in a car accident, and he died instantly.[SLIGHT PAUSE
HERE] Roger was in Toronto when he heard the news. He recalls just running in the streets that night,
not knowing what he could do and was simply unable to process what had just happened.
However, emotional and mental toughness is what Federer is known for on the courts.
It was only a year later in 2003 that Federer won his first Wimbledon.
Federer would win Wimbledon every year from then until 2007. He stopped Pete Sampras from equalling
Bjorn Bjorg’s 5 in a row record in 2001, and from then on went to break Bjorg’s record.
We look at this incredible winning streak today with sheer amazement. But given the circumstances
and things that Federer had to go through during that time, this achievement was truly exceptional.