Every time I have turned on a tennis tournament in the past 20 years, I’ve immediately looked for the name of Serena Williams or Roger Federer. Often, I searched for both.
As we all know, no longer will anyone do that. And strangely, for me and for so many others, their retirements have made far more of an impact than should reasonably be the case.
It’s the same with other sporting retirements; they hit a nerve that you never expected them to.
When Federer and Williams hung up their racquets within a few weeks of each other this year, they had a greater impact on me than any other sporting retirement.
I loved watching both of them play tennis and, with Williams particularly, I was especially interested in anything she had to say off the court too.
They both changed their sport for the better and each has persuasive arguments that they are the best male and female player ever to play the game.
For anyone who watched Federer’s last competitive appearance, at the Laver Cup in September, and did not feel a twinge when they saw the Swiss and his great rival, Rafa Nadal, holding hands in the immediate aftermath, must have a heart of stone.
And similarly, when Williams left the court at the US Open for the final time, it was hard not to empathise with the almost visceral feelings coursing through the American’s veins.
Their retirement shouldn’t really have mattered to anyone other than those directly involved. But at both Federer’s and Williams’ final matches, far more people than merely the individuals themselves were in tears. The outpouring of emotion from those watching was clearly ridiculous.
Yes, they were both phenomenal tennis players, but they hardly ended world hunger, or halted climate change, or did anything that changed the world on a grand scale.
Yet the feeling when they retired – and this happens with only a select group of athletes – was of something akin to grief. Because some sporting retirements mean far more than just sport. Very occasionally, they reflect something in our own lives.
In the case of Williams’ and Federer’s retirements, there will be countless people well into their 20s who do not remember a world without the pair as global superstars.
Athletes’ careers are, often, tied to our own lives. I was still at school when Williams won her first Grand Slam, in 1999. That feels like a million years ago.
And for 20 years of my tennis watching life, she has been a constant presence, even when playing a severely restricted schedule.
Almost every sports fan can identify with someone in this way. Within Scotland, there will be so many who have a similar feeling towards Scott Brown. Love him or hate him, he was a significant presence within Scottish sport for two decades. Until he hung up his boots this year.
As it turned out, 2022 has been quite a year for significant sporting retirements.
Tennis has been hardest hit as, along with Federer and Williams, Ash Barty, Jo Wilfred Tsonga and Juan Martin del Potro played their final competitive matches.
In track and field, Asafa Powell called it a day, as did Sebastian Vettel in F1.
When these athletes waltz off into retirement, it resonates so deeply because of how sharply it brings into focus how quickly, the past 10 or 20 years, have gone.
I remember so clearly watching Federer play Tim Henman at Wimbledon. That was 21 years ago. It is almost unfathomable.
But it is why sport, and elite athletes, mean more than someone just hitting a ball over a net or into a net or running round a track.
It’s because they are tied to our lives, and trigger certain feelings and certain memories, however long they have lain dormant.
Others will take their place, and we will become attached to someone else. But when someone’s story has run parallel to your own for 20 years, they will take some replacing.
AND ANOTHER THING
There is something depressing about the fact, in 2022, ring girls are still a thing.
Having scantily-clad women parade around a boxing ring pre and post-fight, as well as between rounds should have been confined to the 20th century (or the 19th for that matter).
Yet, despite being well into the 21st century, ring girls remain a staple at boxing events, big and small.
The preposterousness of this has never been more obvious than last weekend, when Tyson Fury defeated Derek Chisora inside a freezing cold Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. In bitterly cold temperatures for which these women were clearly not dressed appropriately, the pointlessness, and outdatedness, of these women was amplified.
Despite the Fury and Chisora mis-match of a world title fight needing something to liven it up, ring girls were not it. They bring nothing to the occasion, yet boxing persists with the notion that they should retain a role.
Particularly in 2022, in which women’s boxing has produced some of the very best fights of the year, it should be clear to everyone that a woman’s role in the sport is as a fighter, not as mere decoration.
By continuing to deploy ring girls, despite sports like F1 and road cycling dispensing with the anachronism that was grid girls and podium girls some time ago, boxing continues,to separates itself as a sexist anomaly.
Time for things to change, particularly when, as was the case last weekend, the women are forced to risk pneumonia in order to carry out this outdated job.
