Roger Federer Seeks New Experiences To Sustain His Career

With his 34th birthday approaching, Roger Federer is still chasing titles and big paydays like the exhibition he will play Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden. But he is also chasing novelty.

If he is fresh at an age when other champions have long gone stale, it is in part because he has made a concerted attempt to keep his approach fresh even if not every interested party likes the consequences.

Davis Cup? Been there, finally won that. Sign him out.

India? Istanbul? Never played there. Sign him up.

"The thing is I've been traveling for 20 years now, right?" he said last week. "I've had the chance to go to visit so many places over the years that I feel like at the back end, you've got to catch the places you've never been to."

New York - where he will face Grigor Dimitrov in the BNP Paribas Showdown on Tuesday - hardly qualifies as a new destination. He has won five U.S. Opens in the city and knows its upscale sections well. He has navigated them most recently with his four children in tow, although they will remain in California this week as he makes the quick trip to New York before returning to play in Indian Wells, riding the momentum of beating Novak Djokovic in the Dubai final on Feb. 28. (Read: Federer Clinches Dubai Open Title)

That victory felt all the better to Federer after his surprise loss in the third round of the Australian Open to Italian veteran Andreas Seppi.

"I was playing good, committed tennis again, which I wasn't able to do in Australia against Seppi, for some reason," said Federer, who served and attacked Djokovic effectively on the fast, outdoor hard court.

Tennis remains a family game, but Federer, the winner of a record 17 Grand Slam singles titles and still No. 2 in the rankings, is taking it to new levels on tour since the birth of his twins Leo and Lenny last year. His identical twin daughters, Charlene and Myla, will turn 6 in July.

"This trip was particularly brutal, because coming from Dubai was a 12-hour time change," Federer said. "So the first night was unbelievable. One of my daughters slept from 8 to 12 and then didn't sleep from midnight all the way through, and I was like, I can't believe it."

The traveling Federers manage it all with the help of several nannies. "We have a few just to make sure they don't overwork as well and that we have a good vibe," Federer said.

They also manage it now that Charlene and Myla are of school age, with the help of a kindergarten teacher who accompanies Federer and his wife, Mirka, on the road and instructs the girls most mornings in hotel rooms or other spaces converted into classrooms.

Federer said that the kindergarten teacher had a degree for teaching primary school and that the plan was for the girls to begin the equivalent of first grade on the road later in the year.

"It seems like the right thing to do, so we can all stay together," Federer said. "I wasn't sure if that was what I really wanted for the kids at the beginning, but I must say it keeps us together.

"The girls enjoy it, and I love being with my family, and so does Mirka. She loves being with me, so we get to see each other every single day, basically, and I think that's more important than being apart from each other and them going to normal school at the moment. But things can change very quickly."

Federer has not yet been called into class for show and tell.

"No, no, no," he said, laughing. "But I like to take a peek sometimes, just to see how it's going."

Clearly, the new experiences are not restricted to the tennis court at this stage of Federer's life, but the game itself remains a reliable source even if a court remains a rectangle with a net no matter what the time zone.

He played in India in December (for a seven-figure sum) as part of the inaugural International Premier Tennis League. And though he is skipping the Masters 1000 event in Miami this year because he wants to take an extended block of time for training, he has agreed to play in the new ATP Tour event in Istanbul, which will be held on clay from April 27 to May 3.

The appearance fee should again be lucrative, but Federer said that was not his primary motivation. He can earn such fees just about anywhere in the world.

"I had a lot of Turkish people in my class and in my soccer club when I grew up," he said of his childhood in Basel, Switzerland. "I remember we had Turkey once as a subject in school. I was very intrigued and interested always by this country. And then when it came on the calendar, I saw when it was, and I was like: I can adjust my schedule accordingly. I can make this work, because I'd love to go there.

"I've heard so many great things about the city, like East meets West, Europe meets Asia, and all that stuff."

Africa remains high on Federer's wish list, and he said he had been seriously exploring the idea of an African exhibition tour - similar to the one he conducted in South American in 2012 - until his wife became pregnant with Leo and Lenny.

"I don't know if I can still make it while I'm active," Federer said. "But it still clearly would be great."

Federer's border-hopping curiosity did not extend to Liege, Belgium, where the Swiss team faced the host country without him last weekend in the first round of the Davis Cup.

In November, Federer played through back problems to clinch Switzerland's first Davis Cup title and win one of the last remaining major trophies that he lacked.

He and Stan Wawrinka won on the road against the French in Lille on indoor clay with a record crowd of more than 27,000 in attendance. Federer said he was happy to have avoided his first painkilling injection.

"I was just praying I didn't have to take it, and in the end I didn't, which I was very relieved about," he said. "I never had to take a shot in my life."

But defending the title was never part of his plan, Federer said.

"The idea was to try to win it, hopefully, one time in my career," he said. "That was the goal when I was 17, and it took me so long to do it, and maybe the joy was even bigger. I think you could see that."

He and Wawrinka both declined to play in Liege, and the Swiss captain, Severin Luethi, who is also Federer's coach, had to face Belgium with no player ranked in the top 300. The Swiss fell by the surprisingly close score of 3-2 on Sunday but lost just the same.

Federer has made no definitive announcement but is uncertain if he will play Davis Cup again.

"I think actually, in Switzerland, most of the people understand that I don't play, because they feel that I deserve to not play after all these years," he said. "I've put in a lot of effort, and I must say after the high in Lille with 27,000 people, is it ever going to be better than that? Maybe you want your last Davis Cup memory to be that and not somewhere else?"

What is clear is that Federer wants to make many more tennis memories elsewhere. Novelty is a big factor, but tradition still has its place. Ask him what experience he most wishes to have this year, and he does not mention visiting the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

"The big goal, if I could choose, would be to win Wimbledon," he said. "And I guess in a dream world, become world No. 1 again."

© 2015 New York Times News Service