“Mirka was in crutches for a long time” – Roger Federer recalls wife’s early retirement from tennis due to injury, jokes about his retirement

Roger Federer recently recalled his wife Mirka's early retirement from tennis due to a foot injury. The 20-time Grand Slam Champion started dating Mirka in the year 2000 and married her in April 2009.

Mirka, like her husband, began playing tennis professionally in 1993 and registered her career-high ranking of World No. 76 in September 2001 on the women's singles circuit. Unfortunately, her career was cut short due to a recurring foot injury and she retired in 2002.

Federer recently appeared in an episode of Trevor Noah's What Now? podcast and opened up on several things, including the initial days dating Mirka and her struggle with the foot injury.

The Swiss recalled seeing Mirka requiring crutches for an extended period and suggesting she better quit if tennis was proving to be more painful than fun. He said:

"Have to go back to the early days you know when we got together pretty much at the Olympics in 2000. I was young at the time, Mirka was in the middle of her career, started to have some Achilles issues, struggling after the surgery to come back. I remember she was in crutches walking all the way through Paris," Federer said [at 16:31]

"Super tough moments, she was in crutches for a long time. Over a month I think... She was doing rehab, always pain and then I told her, ‘Why don’t you just retire, I mean this is not the idea of playing tennis with pain all the time, and then we can be on tour together?’, and I was on the ascend of… starting to win Wimbledon, top 10, World No. 1. And she was like ‘Yeah you’re right, I’m done, it’s good!’"

Federer, who hung up his racket in 2022, then joked about how he took a lot of time to decide on his retirement, whereas his wife Mirka made the decision almost instantly.

"Then here we are, me… ‘Ah I don’t know if I should retire, I’m 36, you know, 37, 38, it’s so hard to retire’. I’m thinking of her, she just went like, ‘Okay I’m done, it’s no problem, what’s the big deal’. And I’m like, ‘It’s the biggest deal in the world to retire, I’m making it so emotional, I love the game so much’," he added.

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Roger Federer: "Mirka loved the tour through my career"

Mirka Federer (Getty)

In the same episode of the What Now? With Trevor Noah podcast, Roger Federer said Mirka, after retiring early, enjoyed the tour by being his support system while traveling around the world.

"I think she [Mirka] loved the tour through my career, the travels, and the logistics behind… being my rock through thick and thin," he told Noah (at 17:55).

The 20-time Grand Slam champion continued:

"She’s been incredible throughout, the first half thankfully we had with no children and thankfully we had with children the second half."

Federer and Mirka welcomed twin girls in 2009 and named them Myla and Charlene. Five years later, the tennis couple were blessed with another set of identical twins, two boys named Leo and Lenny.