{"id":1176644,"date":"2026-08-30T04:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T04:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1176644\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T04:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T04:13:10","slug":"roger-federer-enters-tennis-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1176644\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Federer enters tennis Hall of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>She also ribbed Federer by pointing out how, when they first <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/rogerfederer\/5142331\/Roger-Federer-and-Mirka-Vavrinec-become-married.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">got together at the Sydney Olympics<\/a> in 2000, \u201che had exactly zero ATP titles. Zero.\u201d At that time, she went on, \u201cHe was 18 and I was 21. Yes, I was the older woman. Apparently, Roger decided right away that age was just a number. He pursued me anyway, and thankfully he was persistent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mirka\u2019s speech was part of a memorable ceremony. It began with the induction of the great tennis broadcaster <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/tennis\/2021\/10\/15\/mary-carillo-interview-tennis-hiding-alexander-zverev-allegations\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Carillo <\/a>\u2013 who qualified for the Hall of Fame under the \u201ccontributor\u201d category \u2013 and concluded with Federer\u2019s own half-hour speech, which he delivered without notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Although Federer never forgot his lines or muffed his words, he has always been prone to choking up at moments of high emotion. On this occasion, he broke down in tears perhaps half-a-dozen times, necessitating pauses which only added to the poignancy of the moment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI need tissues and sunglasses,\u201d Federer joked at one point, before adding \u201cOh my God. Now we\u2019re going to do the Mirka bit. This is such a mess.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She also ribbed Federer by pointing out how, when they first got together at the Sydney Olympics in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1176645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4105],"tags":[47724,13325,93,79,1715,1068,16,15],"class_list":["post-1176644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-rhode-island","tag-roger-federer","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117182516663655982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1176644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1176645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1176644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1176644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1176644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}