Roger Federer loved tennis to a fault, so how could tennis not love him back?

You read the news, but your mind doesn't process it. You say the words out loud, but they ring hollow. You stare at your screen, waiting for everything to disappear and be replaced by something less apocalyptic, but the images continue to bore into your eyes and brutalize your soul.

We all expected Roger Federer to announce his retirement soon; the knee wasn't getting any better, nor was the man getting any younger. So why did the news on Thursday still sound so shocking and dismaying? Why did it make us numb?

It was probably because a part of us still hoped for one last miracle. Federer's last match couldn't possibly be one in which he was bagelled at Wimbledon; there had to be a redemption of some sort. A fairytale run at a Slam, a competitive match against one of his Big 3 rivals, or maybe even another title at Basel; there had to be something.

As it turns out, the 'something' we've been given is one last appearance at the Laver Cup. There will be much celebration and fanfare when Federer takes the court at London's O2 Arena later this month, and plenty of gushing and googly eyes as he reunites with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic one last time. It's going to be a whole thing.

But it won't quite be the same as an actual run at an actual tennis tournament, no matter how hard the ATP tries to convince us that the Laver Cup is legit. Basel would've been nostalgic, Wimbledon would've been sacred, even Melbourne would've been fairly iconic. But Laver Cup? It will be too artificial; the tournament is, after all, nothing more than a glorified exhibition.

For all practical purposes, Roger Federer's last real match was the loss to Hubert Hurkacz, where he battled the opponent as much as his own body. The fact that it came at his most cherished venue makes the pill even tougher to swallow.

But the more I think about it, the less incongruous the end seems. Federer is not just any sporting great; he isn't defined merely by his success or titles. Federer is someone whose impact extends far beyond scorelines and results; he is someone whose sheer presence on the court is a win for many.

So he ended his career with a bagel on his own turf? Maybe that's a good thing, for how else would future generations know he was human?

He certainly didn't look human in that surreal stretch of time from 2004 to 2007. That was when the term 'full-flight Federer' came to be whispered in hushed tones, out of fear that saying it any louder would break the spell and make us wake up from our dream. At his peak, Federer didn't just soar above the competition; he made the competition utterly irrelevant.

And yet, the words most commonly associated with his reign weren't 'dominant' or 'commanding'. Instead, he was more often described as the most 'elegant' or 'graceful' champion ever.

It's one thing for a tennis player to be elegant and graceful on the court, to look as though they were waving a magic wand rather than bludgeoning a ball. But to do that while also winning everything in sight? That's not what mortals are supposed to be capable of.

Artistic players are notorious for their lapses in concentration and their lack of discipline. Their brand of tennis is not made for consistency, or longevity, or even sporadic big-time success. But Federer somehow made it work; for the longest time, he was both the most artistic player on tour and the most successful player on tour.

He ruled over the tennis world not with an iron fist and a piercing battle cry, but with a velvet glove and an impish grin.

Federer was a trick shot connoisseur's delight, a human highlights reel and an invincible champion all rolled into one. Imagine, if you will, a Nick Kyrgios or a Richard Gasquet winning every tournament they played. That is how improbable a being Peak Federer was; he was the rare genius who combined aesthetics and numbers.

Watching full-flight Federer in action was like watching a warrior crush his enemies by dancing them off the battlefield. It has been described, at various points in time, as a trance-like state, an out-of-body phenomenon, and even as a religious experience.

Federer made you feel things.

But as hard as this may be to believe, such exaggerations still don't do full justice to The Mighty Fed. The tactical uniqueness of his tennis - which is the thing that made him so difficult to counter at the height of his powers - is sometimes overlooked in the Federer discourse.

The Swiss looked at tennis like a painter looks at their canvas, but also like a scientist looks at their laboratory. He combined creativity, physics and instinct to push the boundaries of what was possible in the sport, letting his imagination take him to places nobody thought even existed.

When Federer was on the court, you had to rewire your brain about how forehands and backhands were supposed to be approached. There was an unpredictability, even a certain wildness to his tennis that I doubt can ever be taught (side note: Federer should probably never get into coaching).

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An opponent at the net wouldn't necessarily be countered by a down-the-line backhand pass, as gorgeous as that shot was; he could also be met with a crosscourt caress that fell inside the service line. An overhead wouldn't necessarily send Federer backpedaling in desperation; it could also see him hold his ground and respond with a counter-smash.

A drop shot could appear out of nowhere, bang in the middle of a neutral rally; an audacious half-volley could be attempted from anywhere, no matter what the score.

Federer took risks with his game, perhaps more than any of his peers. You rarely saw him hit the same shot twice in a rally; he was always looking for something different, something extra, that would turn the tide in his favor. And that was as important a factor in the 'Federer experience' as the (admittedly subjective) beauty of his shots.

When Roger Federer was on the court, you got the feeling that anything was possible. His matches were always worth the price of admission, especially because you knew he was the only one who could pull off the things he attempted.

That last bit is why I don't quite nod in agreement when I hear people say Federer changed the game. How can you be said to have changed the game when nobody can come even remotely close to replicating your style?

Ivan Lendl changed the game by kick-starting the power baseline era; Novak Djokovic changed the game by galvanizing a group of we-will-slide-even-on-hardcourt defenders. But Federer didn't inspire a generation to adopt his brand of eclectic, risk-filled tennis, because they simply couldn't even if they tried.

Maybe the man changed the image of the game by transcending its boundaries and becoming a wildly popular global icon. But he didn't quite change the game itself; tennis had started to move away from precision-based quick attacks just before he arrived, and by the time he left it was completely taken over by the Djokovic-ian/Alcaraz-esque consistent, heavy hitting style.

If anything, the Swiss was the last stronghold of all the throwback, nearly extinct elements of tennis - the one-handed backhand, the serve-and-volley, even the use of the slice as a weapon. He was a player who could make you go "tennis isn't quite what it used to be" even while he was strutting his stuff before your very eyes, in the present and the now.

Federer was the last remnant of what had been lost to the changing times, the bridge that connected the past and the future.

You could almost say that as a tennis player he was the king of his own domain, alone and untethered. Federer was impactful and inspiring, yes, but he existed in a tightly bound capsule of time and space - a capsule that he didn't share with anyone else, whether from the previous generation or the next. And his stylistic uniqueness is precisely what made him such a compelling figure for people of all ages and preferences.

Federer fans are often accused of living in the past, of attaching too much importance to the intangibles of his game even after his records have been surpassed. But some of us grew up during the Federer era; after watching first-hand the singularly spectacular way he won matches, how could we possibly get used to any other way?

We've been trying to force ourselves to do exactly that, particularly in the last three years. When Federer failed to convert those match points in the Wimbledon 2019 final - something that would've given him an even more fairytale-like ending than Pete Sampras got at the 2002 US Open - we knew in our hearts that the writing was on the wall.

There was only so long a player could keep the ravages of time at bay. There was only so much a player could do to remain competitive across four different generations. And there were only so many pages in the record books his name could occupy while fellow GOATs Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were still in their primes.

But there was always a tiny glimmer of hope, borne solely out of the way Federer had gone about his business the previous decade. The man didn't have anything to chase after 2009, having made all the relevant records his own already, and yet he had steadfastly refused to call time on his career.

Nadal and Djokovic always had a specific target before them, which they admirably used as motivation to fuel their pursuit of excellence. But as the standard-setter, the leader in the Slam race for a decade, the one who had raised the bar for everyone else to try and match up to, what motivation did Federer have?

The answer is simple, really. Federer kept climbing, even when there was no peak left to scale, because he loved tennis too damn much. He refused to stop even when his body kept telling him to, and he didn't care if he harmed his own statistical record in the process. That is why, even until yesterday, many in the tennis world were still expecting him to make a full return to the tour.

Federer loved tennis so much that tennis had no option but to love him back - to the extent that they started hoping for the impossible.

So when Federer put paid to those hopes with his retirement announcement, it was natural for us to have a hard time processing it. The bagel to Hurkacz, the missed match points in 2019, the eclipsing of his records - none of that really mattered now that we knew he wouldn't be playing anymore.

They say time heals everything. And maybe with time, we will get used to a tennis world without Federer. Fortunately, however, time doesn't erase everything.

We will always have our memories of Federer, memories of his dazzling shot-making and his cat-like footwork and his fearless net approaches. When future generations ask us "Did a player like Federer really exist? He sounds too good to be true", we will be able to reply "Yes" because we actually saw the miracle unfold with our own eyes.

We'll have video evidence to drive home our point, although we'll need more than just that to cover the entirety of the Federer legend. Aside from the jaw-dropping tennis to gush about, there's even more to recount - that he worked hard on his skills towards the end of his career (changing rackets, changing coaches and even changing shots), that he was a perfect gentleman on and off the court, that he had a beautiful family that traveled with him everywhere, that he was an object of worship and reverence for millions across the globe.

Will it be tough to convince future generations that THE Roger Federer was a fact and not just a myth? At first it might be, given the sheer scale of his persona. But those video replays would likely seal the deal - you can't not stare in awe, transfixed by the supernaturalness of it all, when you see one of those Federer specials.

He was a player like no other; he gave joy to his fans in a way that nobody else did, and his departure leaves a void that can't possibly be filled. But we, as the unbelievably privileged witnesses of the Federer Era, will make sure that his magic will never be forgotten. It's the least we can do.

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