SA’s new claim to tennis fame

Here’s a tough one. Which Wimbledon champion has roots in Kempton Park, the unglamorous residential sprawl near Johannesburg International airport? If you’d asked the tennis experts last week, they’d have been at a loss.

Today, of course, the cry of ‘Roger Federer” rings loud around the streets of south-west London, where Britain’s Tim Henman was left behind in the quarterfinals while a Swiss 21-year-old with a South African mother ran off with a trophy that hasn’t been claimed by an Englishman since Fred Perry was strutting his stuff before World War II.

While England has spent millions developing the talent of Henman and a Canadian called Greg Rusedski, South Africa can boast aces like Bob Hewitt, Frew McMillan, Kevin Curran, Johan Kriek, Yvonne Vermaak, Wayne Ferreira — and now we can claim Federer as (nearly) one of our own.

We should have guessed his mother, Lynette, was South African from Federer’s early efforts on the junior circuits around the world.

There he was famous for his racket-throwing, an art first honed by Bob Hewitt at the home of the Lawn Tennis Association in the Sixties and Seventies.

Years of self-control finally saw Federer crowned boys’ champion at Wimbledon in 1998, by 1999 he was the youngest- ever player (at 18) to break into the world’s top 100 and two years ago on Centre Court he downed his own idol, Pete Sampras. That five-set win still rates as his best ever.

All the self-control in the world couldn’t stop the tears after lifting his first grand slam trophy last Sunday, though. In Switzerland, his 7-6 (7/5) 6-2 7-6 (7/3) thrashing of Aussie Mark Phillippoussis was seen by a record TV audience of more than a million and the commentator was stumped for superlatives, resorting to ‘fantastiche” time and again, though he could, for variety, have tried the Afrikaans ‘fantastiek”.

The 21-year-old, 1,8m star — knocked out by Henman in the quarterfinals two years ago and by Croatian Mario Ancic in the first round last year — had finally reached the promised land.

It took a long time in coming, though. Federer had plenty to deal with as a child. Thanks to his mother and the fact that he grew up in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, the young Federer was widely mocked for his accent among the largely French-speaking Swiss tennis fraternity in Lausanne.

His summary of his South African roots is restricted to these short sentences: ‘My dad, Robert, a chemicals salesman, often worked in South Africa. That’s how he met my mum. I think she was like around 21 or so when she left. Now we just go for holidays there.

‘When I’m not playing tennis, I like to visit Miami, Sydney and Durban. I really enjoyed deep-sea fishing in South Africa with my godfather in December 1999. We were fishing for marlin, but weren’t too successful! The ideal day for me is to go to the beach, enjoy the weather and just relax all day long.”

Fortunately it was tennis rather than fishing that first attracted his attention. He says: ‘Both my parents played tennis. I first became interested when I was four years old.”

Strangley, although he holds Sampras in high regard along with Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg, his big hero is a basketballer. ‘My most inspirational player is Michael Jordan. He broke so many records,” he says.

Typically for a top sportsman with superb hand-eye co-ordination, Federer admits: ‘I’m not bad at golf and I like playing ice hockey with my friends in the national centre in Biel. If I wasn’t a tennis player, I might have been a good footballer.”

He fails to mention that Christian Gross, the former Spurs manager, has offered him trials at Grass-hopper, Zurich’s biggest football club.But the love of his life (and that of his top-ranked sister Diana) remains tennis: ‘It’s hard to explain. It’s a one-on-one game with a lot of competition. I really find it a challenge to become the best player in the world.”

Born in Basel but now resident in Munchenstein, Federer returned to Switzerland for the high-altitude tournament at Gstaad this week. And his comical post-match boast, ‘I love watching myself play tennis,” remains a theme. He explains: ‘It’s because my tennis is different to the others.”