A tennis legend takes center court in the Ivy League
What Roger Federer taught me about effortless mastery, the real game of life, and how to find true success
By now, many of you know that Roger Federer, the GOAT of tennis (and yes, I will die on this hill), was Dartmouth's commencement speaker this year.
It's a remarkable speech, one with lessons that extend far beyond the tennis court, delivered by a famous individual that people truly admire, and was an experience that the audience will remember far beyond this calendar year — in short, it is everything that a commencement speech should be.
Typically, it takes me some time to publish anything, but here I am, furiously typing away on my laptop during this marathon flight, fueled by jetstream turbulence over the Pacific and the manic high of watching his commencement speech.
Find the full transcript for Federer’s commencement speech here.
I still can't believe that Dartmouth got Roger Federer to speak at their commencement.
This is partially because I'm incredibly bitter that Princeton's commencement speaker during my graduation was Cory Booker. I was quite underwhelmed by his speech, because it seemed like we were just part of his public speaking circuit for a future presidential run. I was later told that Booker had given a similar speech for Yale five years prior, mostly substituting "Tigers" for "Bulldogs" and "Princeton" for "Yale" in his later address to us. It was a small consolation that tennis legend (and Stanford alum) John McEnroe was Stanford's commencement speaker the year of my GSB graduation, but alas, he's no Federer…
The very concept of the commencement speech is quite interesting — it's one of the most distinctive components of the American university graduation process. There's a tried and true routine: the university invites some distinguished speaker with some semblance of name recognition, the university bestows an honorary degree upon said commencement speaker, the speaker proceeds to share a few personal stories laced with some platitudes, all the students nod along, the friends and family in the audience clap politely, and that's that. It's so formulaic that there's even a satirical guide to commencement speeches from the 1970s that still applies today.
To be fair, there have been a handful of incredible commencement speeches in the past.
David Foster Wallace (Kenyon College, 2005): A speech so good that it was turned into a book, This is Water.
JK Rowling (Harvard College, 2008): Chock full of incredible imagery and clever wordplay, like "Rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
Steve Jobs (Stanford University, 2005): I think this Steve Jobs speech is probably singlehandedly responsible for an entire generation of entrepreneurs — "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
However, these gems are incredibly uncommon. Consequently, it was both astonishing and predictable when Federer delivered a masterpiece of a commencement speech — surprising because it's just so uncommon to produce a profound commencement speech, yet also unsurprising because it's Federer.
In the days since Dartmouth published this commencement address, I've had countless friends independently text me about it. Something like, "Nick, you're obsessed with Federer, so have you heard about his speech yet?" It's a mystery to me why they'd think that I haven't — I've only written my college application essay ranting about Roger Federer's rivalry with Rafael Nadal, spent the past decade on a tennis project named after him, set my Waze navigation voice as Roger's voice, generally attribute my interest in everything athletics to this man, etc. — but I am grateful for all of them for thinking of me.
So, here are some personal reflections by (virtually) attending Federer's commencement address.
Effortless is a myth
In addition to his incredible "This Is Water” commencement speech, David Foster Wallace wrote a famous piece in the New York Times titled "Roger Federer as Religious Experience.”
It perfectly encapsulates the Federer viewing experience, through the turns of phrase that are uniquely David Foster Wallace:
Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re O.K.
Or this one:
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws.
But his entire piece is effectively encapsulated by this line:
And none are faster, or more deceptively effortless about it, than Roger Federer.
Effortless. Roger Federer is synonymous with effortless.
And you can ask any tennis fan — hardcore or casual, or anywhere in between — which tennis player best represents effortless?
The immediate answer is always Roger Federer. Any other answer is invalid. It's why they call him "The Swiss Maestro" — there's literally a biography on Federer called The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer.
And yet, the first of Roger's lessons from his speech was to shatter this false conception, pointing out that “effortless” is a myth:
People would say my play was effortless. Most of the time, they meant it as a compliment. But it used to frustrate me when they would say, “He barely broke a sweat!” Or “Is he even trying?” The truth is, I had to work very hard to make it look easy.
I remember watching Federer in 2006 when he was at the peak of his powers. I relished watching the calm and collected Swiss maestro who would overwhelm his opponents without any apparent effort. This fascinated me, so when I dug deeper into the video archives, I was stunned to discover that the younger Federer was tempestuous with an explosive temper. Watching his earlier tennis career, it was obvious that the young Swiss had an incredible amount of talent, but it wasn't fully harnessed.
In his early days, he didn't have that devastating forehand, the elegant one-handed backhand, the picture perfect serve, the superhuman footwork, nor the incredible coolness under pressure. The young Federer was a blurry picture of the Swiss maestro we have since immortalized in our memory, and it took incredible discipline and sacrifice to unlock it. Perhaps most tennis fans didn't notice the gradual change, but I had the gift (and curse) of fanatically following over his career.
Looking closer, it was obvious that he put in incredible amounts of work to hone his craft. In his early career, one of his opponents publicly criticized his lack of endurance, saying, "Roger will be the favorite for the first two hours, then I'll be the favorite after that." Federer trained his endurance and evolved: he even moved his training to the scalding summer temperatures of Dubai, all in an effort to better adapt his body to physical and mental strain.
His approach reminds me of the Japanese proverb: “Cry in practice and laugh in competition.”
Looking back, it's comical that Federer’s opponents ever thought his mental toughness was an exposable weakness, but that just shows how far he's come.
As Roger pointed out to the students:
I got there by trying to outwork my opponents. I believed in myself, but belief in yourself, has to be earned. (emphasis mine).
Let me pause and highlight that: belief in yourself must to be earned.
These days, it's common to hear people say “believe in yourself” and to follow up with a variety of positive psychology principles — stay positive, embrace a growth mindset, practice gratitude, and others. And while the right psychological mindset can help people achieve greater heights, there is nothing that beats actual ability — especially ability that is earned.
Confidence honed from years of craft surpasses reassurance offered by positive psychology.
Work ethic eliminates fear.
As the Buddhist saying goes: “Faith is the confidence born out of realizing the fruits of practice.”
Federer's aura of effortless perfection is a fiction, but it's a useful fiction nevertheless. While we all should know what amount of pain and dedication it took to hone such preternatural skill, the immaculate Swiss Maestro inspires us all to understand what human potential is capable of.
This was a particularly apt lesson to share with the graduating class, especially to a group of ambitious and hard-charging Ivy League students. From Roger:
From this day forward, some people are going to assume that because you graduated from Dartmouth that it all is going to come easy for you. And you know what? Let them believe that — as long as you don't.
It's only a point
Here's a question: What percentage of total points did Federer win in his career?
Federer posed this exact question to the Dartmouth audience, and the answer might be surprising: 54%.
In his career, Roger Federer won 82% of his matches, but only won 54% of all total points.
As you let this marinate, there are actually a handful of embedded lessons to consider. The first is more explicitly called out by Federer during his speech: if you want to be great, you will have to endure a lot of failure on the way.
As he put it to the students:
When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.
He shared about his fateful 2008 Wimbledon finals match against Rafael Nadal. This particular duel is widely considered the best tennis match of all time, and it unfortunately ended with Federer's defeat. If you haven't seen the match, I recommend at least watching the highlights (watching the full match is far too painful for me):
Federer admitted that he had lost the mental battle before the match even began, still nursing psychological injuries from his previous beatdown from Nadal at the French Open. But from this, he learned something very important:
When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world — and it is. But when it's behind you, it's behind you.
Federer highlights a fascinating duality: each point is crucial in the moment, yet irrelevant once it's over. This paradox teaches us to be fully present, give our all, and then move on without letting past outcomes dictate our future. Success lies in this balance — intense focus on the task, then effortlessly letting it go to remain agile and forward-looking.
You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments — that is to me, the sign of a champion. The best in the world are not the best because they win every point; it's because they know they lose again and again, and have learned how to deal with it.
As Roger explicitly points out, "It's only a point."
But there's also another implicit lesson here, one worth emphasizing further: understand the game you're playing.
Stepping back to the answer to our initial question: Federer won 82% of all of his career matches, but he only won 54% of all points he played.
I won't burden you with the exact details of how tennis is scored, but it is possible to win more points than your opponent but still lose the match. In addition, you'll see plenty of matches where one player destroyed the other player 6-2 6-1, and then realize that the winner only won a handful more of the total points.
In undergrad, I became so curious about this fact that I actually wrote a paper analytically solving the tennis game tree to predict this exact match win probability.
If a player has a 50% chance of winning each point, they should win 50% of their matches (yes, this intuitively checks out). However, if their point win probability increases to 55%, they win 91% of their matches. If they were to win 60% of all their points, they win a whopping 99.6% of their matches.
For context, the most dominant professional tennis seasons hover around 55% point win probability:
Roger Federer 2006 season: 94.8% match win percentage (92-5) with 55.6% total points won
Novak Djokovic 2015 season: 93.3% match win percentage (83-6) with 55.8% total points won
Rafael Nadal 2010 season: 87.7% match win percentage (71-10) with 54.6% total points won
In tennis, the match win probability versus point win probability is highly nonlinear (it's sigmoidal), and looks like this:
Great, thanks for the math lesson, Nick, but I thought we were talking about life lessons?
Tennis is a game where a minuscule short-term edge compounds into an enormous advantage over the long-term. Looking at the graph, you notice that a slight change in your point win percentage cascades into a drastically larger overall chance of winning.
Tennis is a fascinating and quirky game, in part due to its game tree scoring system. Other sports, like basketball, are won by the team with the highest number of points at the end of a defined time period.
Winning over the long term means picking your spots and selective aggression, but that's only possible if you have an intimate understanding of the rules and structure of your game. Sports offer an incredible arena to learn life lessons.
So, does your game look more like basketball, where simply scoring more points than your opponent leads to victory? Does it look more like tennis, where a first round match could last for over three days?
Are your comparative advantages suited for this particular game? Did you choose to this game, or did this game choose you?
Are you playing basketball, tennis, or another sport?
Or, perhaps can you step back and realize that perhaps the real game to be played is actually even more complex?
Life is bigger than the court
At the end of each of his podcast episodes, Shane Parrish always asks his guests the same question: "What is success for you?"
This is the metaquestion that I don't think most people give enough thought to. Of course, I don't think that there's even a single correct answer, but rather the act of contemplating the question is itself the answer. It's kind of like how the meaning of life might literally be the struggle to impart meaning to meaning.
For most people, the instinctive answer to "What is success?" is to point to some external figure, usually some person with great wealth, fame, prestige, and power. But this is a flawed analysis, because you shouldn't feel jealous of someone else's life unless you're willing to trade your life for the entirety of theirs.
Most of these incredibly “successful” people have made significant sacrifices to reach their current standings, tradeoffs that most of us certainly wouldn't be comfortable making. Indeed, David Senra has made a career of studying the lives of history's greatest founders, leaders, entrepreneurs, and thinkers; so far, after reviewing hundreds of stories, the singular life he considers successful is that of the mathematician Ed Thorp.
In light of all this, Roger Federer is on my (very) short list of truly successful people.
One of the things that I always found fascinating about Federer was that he was more than just a tennis player.
His wife, Mirka, has been his constant companion through his tennis career, and later she would even bring their children (two sets of twins, just imagine all the possible tennis configurations!) to his matches. And of course, Federer has two supportive parents; I can't remember how many tennis broadcasts would cut to his father and mother sitting in his player box, politely spectating as their son elegantly dismantled yet another opponent on the court below.
Federer's influence stretches far beyond the baseline, a personality and presence transcending the tennis court itself. As much as he dominated the sport, he has many endeavors off the court, not limited to all of his philanthropic work and business ventures. When you think of Federer, you don't just think of "all-time tennis great" — it's something more.
It turns out that the real game that Federer has been playing, is even bigger than tennis.
And that bigger game helped fuel him within tennis. To the Dartmouth audience, Federer mused that perhaps one of the reasons why his tennis career had such incredible longevity is that he never let tennis completely dominate his life, and he remembered his roots and the other people in the world:
But even when I was in the top five, it was important to me to have a life: a rewarding life, full of travel, culture, friendships, and especially family. I never abandoned my roots, and I never forgot where I came from, but I also never lost my appetite to see this very big world. I was excited to travel the world, but not just as a tourist. I realized pretty early that I wanted to serve other people in other countries.
It's like the oft-quoted difference between knowledge and wisdom: wisdom is intelligence and knowledge tempered with time.
It seems to me that Federer, somehow, developed that wisdom and perspective.
In contrast with many of his other high-performing peers, Federer seems like he has truly accomplished success. He's not only achieved every single accolade in his field, but he has also built and maintained so many treasured relationships and positively impacted so many people's lives around the globe.
Federer has reached the mythical pinnacle of success at success at success.
Never meet your heroes
They say to never meet your heroes; you'll only end up disappointed.
For many cases, I've sadly found that to be true.
And while I've still never met Roger (not for lack of trying), I still held a bit of that same fear when I first heard about his commencement speech. I think it's apparent the disdain I hold for most commencement speeches, because most speakers squander the potentially impactful opportunity and instead deliver cliche after cliche.
I feared it would be much of the same for Federer's speech, but thank the tennis gods, his speech epitomized his tremendous grace, poignancy, humor, and insight that few can wield.
I've abandoned this childish naiveté of idolizing my previous heroes, but my idealistic optimism remains for Federer.
While I'm no longer rooting for Roger on the tennis court, I have the chance to continue rooting for him in his new arenas — his philanthropy, commercial endeavors, and his impact on the world.
I can only dream of impacting people the way that Roger has, but he has been — and continues to be — an inspiration. And I'll relentlessly work to follow the principles he shared here, match after match, point after point.
Roger, thank you for decades of inspiration on the tennis court, the hilarious commercials, and everything else.
Congratulations on your graduation from Dartmouth, Dr. Roger(!), and I can't wait to see what you accomplish in your next chapter.