FIVE QUESTIONS WITH...Rene Stauffer
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Liza Horan
330 Third Ave.
New York,
212-682-6829
liza@tenniswire.org
06/25/07 -
"Five Questions With..." is a series featuring exclusive interviews with important industry people. You will learn something with each edition.
Stauffer is a Swiss sports journalist who started covering Roger Federer in 1996 when the now 10-time Grand Slam champion was 15 years old. He published an unauthorized biography in German that has been published in English as Quest for Perfection: The Roger Federer Story. The book, which has Federer's 'unofficial' support, makes its official debut on this first day of Wimbledon.
By Liza Horan, Editor
Q. How cooperative was Roger Federer with you toward writing the book?
I have done a lot of interviews with Roger over the years and asked him basically all the questions I ever had. Roger gave me the green light for this book, but he did not want to put out his official biography as of now. That is why his involvement is marginal and he himself only got to read it when it was published. I am happy to know that he likes it. I have a large personal archive with some old and, so far, unpublished quotes from Roger. I have a lot of personal memories with him over the years. What helped a lot was to find people who were willing to share their memories of him in Switzerland, like his parents, the family he lived with as a junior, friends, former junior rivals or coaches.
Q. Why did you decide to write this book on his career at this point, rather than earlier or later?
I always dreamt of writing a book, and covering tennis and Roger's career as closely as I luckily was able to do, I felt in the best possible situation for this task. I first wanted to write the biography after [he won] Wimbledon [the first time] in 2003, but Roger and his family felt it was too early.
Why now? Because all that has happened in the last [few] years is more than worth to be told in a book and to be made available for people that did not follow Roger in the early stages of his career. I have covered professional tennis for about 25 years now and think I should be in the right position to put Roger and his career into a right perspective.
Q. Has Roger's success kept tennis in the headlines in Switzerland? Do you think tennis would be so prominent there if there was no Roger?
Surely. We were lucky to have Martina Hingis, but without Roger, tennis would not be anything near what it is now in Switzerland. Even though Martina came back, her last major title is already eight years old. And Patty Schnyder never really was a very popular athlete in Switzerland, due to her turbulent past. Federer is by far the greatest athlete Switzerland has ever produced, all sports included.
Q. What is the secret to Switzerland's tennis success?
I think the roots of the Swiss tennis success story lie in the fact that we already had a very good and promising player in the late '70s–Heinz Gunthardt. He won [Roland Garros] and Wimbledon as a junior and was
expected to be “the Borg of Switzerland.” Although his career was overshadowed by hip problems, he was pretty successful. [He] paved the way for pro tennis in Switzerland and created enough attention to help tennis get popular. After Gunthardt, there never really was a slump in Swiss pro tennis. For such a small country, players like (Jacob) Hlasek or (Marc) Rosset were pretty successful as well. Therefore tennis always was amongst the first choices of individual sports in Switzerland. Of course there is a lot of luck involved in the fact that Martina Hingis’ mother came to Switzerland when she was (Martina was) 7 or 8. Martina is not really a representative of Swiss tennis, more the product of her mother.
Q. What has it meant for your professional work to have a Swiss champion of Roger Federer's stature?
Being able to cover Roger's career for one of Switzerland's leading national newspapers (Tages-Anzeiger) has given me many insights and experiences I would not have otherwise, as well as many trips to tournaments and cities I never saw before. It’s a privilege working with him and being able to communicate with him in our own language since he is so cooperative and appreciates the work of the media. I guess it must be a dream of every sports writer to be able to look behind the scenes and follow the development of such an outstanding athlete like Roger as closely as I can. Covering Roger has opened also many doors within the tennis tour and lead to many rewarding personal contacts with people from different angles.
Links:
www.rogerfedererbook.com
