Roger Federer will play an exhibition at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday: one set of singles against Andy Roddick, then a set of doubles alongside John McEnroe against Roddick and Andre Agassi, ESPN reports.
He is 45. His last competitive match was a quarterfinal loss to Hubert Hurkacz at Wimbledon in 2021, and his last US Open appearance was in 2019, when he lost in the quarterfinals to Grigor Dimitrov.
He is not pretending otherwise
"I haven't played a singles set in, I don't know, maybe five years," Federer said. "I don't know how it's going to go tomorrow. So, there is a lot of uncertainty, but a lot of happiness that I can return to Arthur Ashe."
Asked whether this might lead to competing again, he was unambiguous: "No, no, no, no. No, not at all."
That is worth quoting in full because these events often generate speculation the participants never invited. He has closed the question before anyone could open it.
Why this court
Federer won five consecutive US Opens between 2004 and 2008, part of 20 Grand Slam singles titles.
Arthur Ashe is the largest tennis stadium in the world, and it was the site of a long stretch of his career at its height. Returning to play a single set there, badly or well, is a different thing from a testimonial elsewhere.
The exhibition comes days before his enshrinement in the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, on Saturday. The order of events is neat: the ceremony that records what he did, preceded by an evening of him doing a small amount of it again.
The opponents
Roddick, McEnroe and Agassi are all Hall of Fame players themselves and all considerably past their own competitive careers, which is the point of the format. Nobody is being asked to be what they were.
What we could not establish
We could not establish who is promoting the event, whether it is raising money for a cause, ticketing arrangements, or whether it will be broadcast. We verified this account from a single publication.
