After 15,000 matches, 20 Grand Slam titles and 24 years, Roger Federer announces retirement

The world's love affair with Roger Federer comes to an end, but as always, it's on his terms...And just like that, it was over. You always knew it was round the corner, but there was a "maybe one last time" rider flickering all the time. Now we know it's not happening. There will be no farewell tour, no grind of midnight despair. Roger Federer will not be performing for us beyond the Laver Cup next week.

The final memory of Federer playing a match at Wimbledon will be the bagel that he suffered at the hands of Hubert Hurkacz. But that's fine. Life was never meant to be a fairytale, so why an exemption for Federer? When you go back, you can always see moments when he could have chosen the fairytale ending. A retirement at the end of 2017, with two Slams on a phenomenal return, and there would have always been that afterglow of a Pete Sampras-esque exit.

But for one of the greatest artists of sport, a mundane exit was a conscious choice. The man who has the highest number of Wimbledon titles goes out with a bagel in his last outing on grass. Or the image of a player whose body was "god-gifted" - according to his fiercest rivals - fighting to become fit for one last try, Federer the master chose to be the common man. Which he truly believed he was!

Roger Federer holding his 20 Grand Slam tournaments winner's trophies. (AFP Photo)The little boy in his early teens used to cry because he had to spend the week in the Swiss tennis academy in Lausanne, where French is spoken. For little Roger, the comfort of his hometown Basel, where he could speak German, was more important. But not for all those who were around him. They saw probable greatness, and Federer was okay to accept it and fight on.

He skipped his first Wimbledon