It's great to see you and hello class of 2024.

This is so exciting.

It's an incredible feeling to be here with you and I am so excited to join you today.

Really you have no idea how excited I am.

Keep in mind this is literally only the second time I've ever set foot on a college campus.

Second time ever.

But for some reason you are giving me a doctorate degree.

I just came here to give a speech but I get to go home as Dr. Roger.

That's a pretty nice bonus.

So Dr. Roger this has to be my most unexpected victory ever.

Thank you.

President Beilock, the board of trustees, faculty members, thank you for this honor.

President Beilock, I'm incredibly grateful and I'll try my best not to choke.

I'm a little bit outside of my comfort zone today.

This is not my usual scene and these are not my usual clothes.

Do you dress like this every day at Dartmouth?

The robe is hard to move in.

Keep in mind I've worn shorts almost every day for the last 35 years.

I'm not a person who gives a lot of speeches like this.

Maybe the worst but an important speech was when I started on the Swiss national team.

I was only 17 years old and I was so nervous I couldn't even say more than four words.

Happy to be here.

Well here we are 25 years later and I still feel a little nervous but I've got a lot more than four words to say to you.

Starting with I'm happy to be here.

Happy to be with you here on the green.

As you might have heard grass is my favorite surface.

The big green it must be destiny.

And there's another reason I'm here and I can sum it up in two words.

Beer pong.

Or pong as you call it and I guess you can all call it what you like.

I'm told Dartmouth invented it.

Now this sport, wait is pong a sport?

It is?

Okay or is it is the way of life?

Either way Dartmouth is the Wimbledon of pong and it's even and it's even raining like in Wimbledon.

So I'm glad to work on my shots with some of you.

These past few days I'm actually thinking about turning pro.

But I know there's more to Dartmouth than pong.

I've spent an amazing couple of days here and you've made Hanover feel like home.

The mountains here are exactly like the Swiss Alps just shorter.

But I'm loving it here.

I got a chance to hit some balls with my kids at the Boss Tennis Center yesterday.

I did a walk-em.

I got to climb the Baker Tower.

I saw some incredible views and took my kids to see the Dr. Zoo's books at the library.

And of course also I crushed some chocolate chip cookies from FOCO and I ate some EBA's chicken sandwich from Lou's.

I've done it all.

But there's another big reason I'm here.

Tony G, class of 93.

Are we rapping now?

Tony Gotzig is my business partner, my longtime agent and one of my closest friends and most of all I'm a proud father of Isabella, class of 2024.

From Tony and now Bea, I know how special this place truly is and how loyal you are to each other and how obsessive you are about this color green.

I was with their family including Mary Jo and Nico the day Bea got into Dartmouth.

I remember how crazy happy she was.

I saw a smile and a level of excitement on her face that I'd never seen before.

But then I got here and actually everybody is smiling like this.

I can see how proud you are of this place and this moment.

You've worked so hard to get here.

I have huge respect for all of you, what you have achieved.

And for the families and friends who have helped to achieve it, let's give them a big hand.

I'm even more impressed because I left school at the age of 16 to play tennis full-time, so I never went to college.

But I did graduate recently.

I graduated tennis.

I know the word is retire.

Roger Federer retired from tennis.

Retired, the word is awful.

You wouldn't say you retired from college, right?

It sounds terrible.

Like you, I finished one big thing and I'm moving on to the next.

Like you, I'm figuring out what that is.

Graduates, I feel your pain.

I know what it's like when people keep asking what your plan is for the rest of your life.

They ask me, now that you are not a professional tennis player, what do you do?

I don't know and it's okay not to know.

So what do I do with my time?

I'm a dad first, so I guess I drive my kids to school.

I play chess online against strangers.

I vacuum the house.

No, in truth, I'm loving the life of a tennis graduate.

I graduated tennis in 2022 and you are graduating college in 2024, so I have a head start in answering the questions of what's next.

Today, I want to share a few lessons I've relied on through this transition.

Let's call them tennis lessons.

I hope they will be useful in the world beyond Dartmouth.

So here's the first.

Effortless is a myth.

I mean it.

I say that as someone who has heard that word a lot.

Effortless.

People would say my play was effortless.

Most of the time they meant it as a compliment, but it used to frustrate me when they would say he barely broke a sweat or he's even trying.

The truth is I had to work very hard to make it look easy.

I spent years whining, swearing, sorry, throwing my racket before I learned to keep my cool.

The wake-up call came early in my career when an opponent at the Italian Open publicly questioned my mental discipline.

He said, Roger will be the favorite for the first two hours, then I'll be the favorite after that.

I was puzzled at first, but eventually I realized what he was trying to say.

Everybody can play well the first two hours.

You're fit, you're fast, you're clear, and after two hours your legs get wobbly, your mind starts wandering, and your discipline starts to fade.

It made me understand I have so much work ahead of me and I'm ready to go on this journey.

I get it.

My parents, my coaches, my fitness coach, everyone had been calling me out.

And now even my rivals were doing it.

Players, thank you.

I'm eternally grateful for what you did because you made me work is the ultimate achievement.

I got that reputation because my warm-ups at the tournaments were so casual that people didn't think I'd been training hard.

But I had been working hard before the tournament when nobody was watching.

Maybe you've seen a version of this at Dartmouth.

How many times did you feel like your classmates were racking up A after A without even trying while you were pulling all-nighters?

Loading up on caffeine, maybe, or crying softly in a corner of Sanborn Library?

Hopefully, like me, you learned that effortless is a myth.

I didn't get where I got on pure talent alone.

I got there by trying to outwork my opponents.

I believed in myself, but belief in yourself has to be earned.

There was a moment in 2003 when my self-belief really kicked in.

I was at the ATP finals where only the best eight players qualify, and I beat some of the top players I really, really admired by aiming right at their strength.

Before, I would run away from their strength.

If a guy had a strong forehand, I would try to hit his backhand, but now I would try to go after his forehand.

I tried to beat the baseliners from the baseline.

I tried to beat the attackers by attacking.

I tried to beat the net Why did I do it?

To amplify my game and expand my options.

You need a whole arsenal of strength, so if one of them breaks down, you've got something left.

When your game is clicking like that, winning is easy, relatively.

Then there are days when you just feel broken.

Your back hurts, your knee hurts.

I had that a lot.

Maybe you're a little sick or scared, but you still find a way to win, and those are the victories we can be most proud of because they prove that you can win not just when you're at your best, but especially when you aren't.

Yes, talent matters.

I'm not going to stand here and tell you it doesn't, but talent has a broad definition.

Most of the time, it's not about having a gift.

It's about having grit.

In tennis, a great forehand with sick racket head can be called a talent, but in tennis, like in life, discipline is also a talent, and so is patience.

Trusting yourself is a talent.

Embracing the process, loving the process is a talent.

Managing your life, managing yourself, these can be talents too.

Some people are born with them.

Everybody has to work at them.

From this day forward, some people are going to assume that because you graduated from Dartmouth, it all is going to come easy for you, and you know what?

Let them believe that as long as you don't.

Okay, second lesson.

It's only a point.

Let me explain.

You can work harder than you thought possible and still lose.

I have many times.

Tennis is brutal.

There's no getting around the fact that every tournament ends the same way.

One player gets a trophy.

Every other player gets back on a plane, stares out of the window, and thinks, how the hell did I miss that shot?

Imagine if today only one of you got a degree.

Congratulations, this year's graduate.

Let's give her a hand.

The rest of you, the other 1,000 of you, better luck next time.

So you know, I tried not to lose, but I did lose, sometimes big.

For me, one of the biggest was the finals at Wimbledon in 2008, me versus Nadal.

Some call it the greatest match of all time.

Okay, all respect to Rafa, but I think it would have been way, way better if I had won.

Losing at Wimbledon was a big deal because winning Wimbledon is everything.

Obviously, except winning that Dartmouth Master Pong title sophomore summer, it is.

I mean, I've gotten to play in some amazing venues around the world, but when you have the chance to walk onto center court at Wimbledon, the cathedral of tennis, and when you finish as the champion, you feel the magnitude of the moment, and there's nothing like it.

In 2008, I was going for a record six consecutive title.

I was playing for history.

I'm not going to walk you through the match point by point.

If we did, we would be here for hours, almost five hours to be exact.

There were rain delays.

The sun went down.

Rafa won two sets.

I won the next two sets in tie breaks, and we found ourselves at seven all in the fifth.

I understand why people focus on the end.

The final minute is so dark, I could barely see the chalk on the grass, but looking back, I feel like I lost at the very first point of the match.

I looked across the net, and I saw a guy who just a few weeks earlier crushed me in straight sets at the French Open, and I thought this guy is maybe hungrier than I am, and he's finally got my number.

It took me onto the third set before I remembered, hey, buddy, you're the five-time defending champion, and you're on grass, by the way.

You know how to do this, but I came too late, and Rafa won, and it was well deserved.

Some defeats hurt more than others.

I knew I would never get another shot at six in a row.

I lost Wimbledon.

I lost my number one ranking, and suddenly people said, he had a great run.

Is this the changing of the guard?

But I knew what I had to do, keep working and keep competing.

In tennis, perfection is impossible.

In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.

Now, I have a question for you.

What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches?

Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.

When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

You teach yourself to think, okay, I double-faulted, it's only a point.

Okay, I came to the net, then I got passed again, it's only a point.

Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top ten playlist, that too is just a point.

So here's why I'm telling you this.

When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is.

But when it's behind you, it's behind you.

This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity and focus.

The truth is, whatever game you play in life, sometimes you're going to lose a point, a match, a season, a job.

It's a rollercoaster with many ups and downs, and it's natural when you're down to doubt yourself and to feel sorry for yourself.

And by the way, your opponents have self-doubt too, don't ever forget that.

But negative energy is wasted energy.

You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments.