Roger Federer thinks he has "maybe hit 2 million shots" in his life

Roger Federer recently claimed that there is a good chance he has hit two million shots throughout his life, if not two million serves. The 20-time Grand Slam champion reckons that if you count all his practice sessions and doubles matches in addition to his singles encounters, he may have struck a tennis ball more than a million times.

Federer is still out of action following a double knee surgery last year. But the World No. 5's return now seems in sight, as it is being rumored that he will make his comeback at the ATP Qatar Open in the second week of March.

Roger Federer recently took part in a zoom conference call with several employees of luxury brand Moet & Chandon, one of his sponsors. During the interaction, Federer was asked if he thinks he has delivered over two million serves during his life.

The Swiss answered in the negative, pointing out that his shoulder wouldn't survive such an ordeal. But he seemed quite convinced about having struck over two million shots overall.

"I have definitely not hit two million serves in my life, I don’t think my shoulder would survive that," Federer said. "I feel though that maybe I’ve hit two million shots in my life in all the practices and the juniors, doubles, you name it, so maybe I have hit two million shots."

Since the discussion was about the number of shots that he has hit in comparison to the number of bubbles in a champagne glass, Roger Federer then wondered aloud about the difficulty of counting such minute details.

"But I wonder who the person is who’s counting all the bubbles in the glass - in a slow-motion video and for how long and how difficult that must be, I don’t even know," Federer added.

Roger Federer has struck 11,344 aces in his professional career

Roger Federer prepares to serve

While it may not be easy to keep a count of the total number of serves a player has chalked up, counting the aces they've hit is fairly straightforward.

Roger Federer has delivered a whopping 11,344 aces in the 1,449 competitive matches he has played. The 39-year-old is currently third in the all-time list of aces served, behind the sual suspects Ivo Karlovic and John Isner.

Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal both have over 1000 matches to their name, but neither is close to Federer’s tally. Djokovic has served up 5,870 aces in 1083 matches, while Nadal has only managed 3,604 in 1175 matches.

Given that neither of these players is particularly known for their serve, the numbers are not too surprising. Djokovic and Nadal are at the 11th and 25th spot respectively in the all-time list.