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Above, a view inside Hayward Field at the University of Oregon. Left, Phil
Knight is believed to have donated more than $1 billion to the school.
to look at it. That’s normal, be-
cause when you realize that you
can’t play at the top level any-
more, and the knee doesn’t allow
you to do that, then you have to
have that conversation. But this is
not the time to think about that.”
The idea is to test Federer’s
body at early-season tournaments
in Doha and Dubai, evaluate, and
then ramp up for Wimbledon,
which is back on after a 2020 can-
cellation, then the Summer Olym-
pics in Tokyo, the U.S. Open, and
Federer’s Laver Cup event in Bos-
ton in September.
Maybe he’ll play a little more.
Maybe a little less. Clay? “I really
don’t know yet.”
He will be 40 when the U.S.
Open takes place in late summer.
His last competitive match was a
January 2020 semifinals loss to
Novak Djokovic in Melbourne, and
his last major tournament victory
was Australia 2018. In terms of
collected majors, Federer now
shares the lead car with 34-year-
old Rafael Nadal, who also has 20.
Meanwhile, the 33-year-old Djok-
ovic—who has now passed
Federer’s mark with 311 weeks as
World No. 1—is gaining hard in the
rear view, with 18.
Federer is aware, naturally. “I
think what Novak and Rafa have
done as of late, again is extraordi-
nary,” he said. “They are not 25,
either, themselves.”
How Federer fares in this re-
turn, who knows? Even he doesn’t
seem terribly certain. “Honestly, if
I can complete a match, several
matches….I will be happy leaving
the court, because I know I played
a tournament again,” he said. “Ex-
pectations are really low, but I
hope I can surprise myself, and
maybe others.”
It will have to suffice. Roger
Federer is back playing tennis. It
feels like enough.
It was him, all right.
Roger Federer. Look-
ing fit, looking rested,
seemingly ready to go,
though this was an-
other one of those
Zoom media calls, so who can re-
ally judge?
The familiar-looking gentleman
in the square on the screen said he
was eager to get back at it.
“I feel like there’s still some-
thing left,” the 39-year-old Federer
said.
This was what tennis wanted—
needed—to hear. This week,
Federer will play an ATP tourna-
ment in Doha, Qatar, his first com-
petitive action in more than a
year. Over the past 13 months,
Federer has endured a knee sur-
gery, watched the planet sink into
a pandemic, endured a second sur-
gery on the same knee, and
watched a ton of tennis played
without him on TV.
“I watched quite a lot, actually,”
he said. “I’m not just spending
hours and hours
in front of the TV
watching all the matches, but a lot
of highlights, and making sure I
stay up to speed….I want to know
what’s going on.”
The sport missed him. It’s
tempting to say it was weird to
see tennis continue on in Federer’s
absence, but this whole pandemic-
era stretch has been absurdly
weird—Dominic Thiem and Alexan-
der Zverev played a U.S. Open final
in front of 14 people and three pi-
geons; not having Federer was
about the 100th-weirdest thing
about tennis in these past seven
months.
But the tennis lunatics know
what I mean. The game’s not the
same without its most decorated
men’s player, the man with 20 ma-
jor titles, those balletic ground-
strokes and the barely flappable
mien. Federer feels irreplaceable,
GR
AHA
M
DENHOLM/
GETTY
IMA
GES
you’ll get to see the one and only
Federer play tennis in a socially
distant arena.
Because he’s been gone so long,
and because the right knee had to
be worked on twice—swelling con-
tinued after the first procedure, so
they went in again—Federer was
asked, as he often is, about retire-
ment, and if he’d pondered the
end. Though he acknowledged the
surgery redo had laid him low (“I
couldn’t believe I had to do a sec-
ond one”) he’d not gotten there.
“Retirement was never really on
the cards,” he said. “If the knee
keeps bothering me for months
and months to come, then we have
JASON GAY
Roger Federer Returns to the Tennis Court
M
ost college track and
field stadiums are
basic structures. The
University of Arkan-
sas’s John McDon-
nell Field, one of the top outdoor
track and field facilities in the na-
tion, cost about $34 million includ-
ing its 1998 construction and sub-
sequent renovations. Even
adjusting for inflation, McDonnell
cost a fraction of what big schools
routinely spend to renovate their
football stadiums.
Then there is the University of
Oregon’s Hayward Field, a 100-
year-old facility that will soon re-
open after receiving a stunning,
amenity-rich renovation. The over-
haul, really a reconstruction, fea-
tures a stone base that refers to
the state’s Cascade mountain range
and a curling, transparent overhang
supported by timber beams meant
to echo fir forests. It glistens with
modern training facilities, a health
clinic and even a barbershop.
The official cost of the renova-
tion: $270,047,937, according to an
Oregon athletics financial report.
Yet the university doesn’t actu-
ally know precisely how much the
project cost. Because of the privacy
preferences of its lead donor and
mastermind—Nike co-
founder and Oregon alum-
nus Phil Knight, the uni-
versity’s frequent
benefactor—that figure is
an estimate prepared for
the university by an ap-
praiser.
“I never talk about how
much on gifts,” Knight
said in an email response
to questions from The
Wall Street Journal. Al-
though more than 50
other people gave to the
Hayward Field project,
Knight confirmed that he
and his wife, Penny, were
the biggest donors. The
Knight family’s wealth is
estimated by Forbes at
more than $50 billion.
The new Hayward Field
could hold a home meet
as soon as next month if
health conditions permit. It’s set to
host the U.S. Olympic track and
field trials, postponed for a year
because of the pandemic, in June,
and the world track and field cham-
pionships in 2022.
Jimmy Stanton, UO athletics se-
nior associate athletics director,
communications, said the Hayward
renovation “exceeded its goals” and
“sets the standard for track and
field facilities both nationally and
in the world for the next several
decades.”
The scale and expense of Hay-
ward’s renovation was exceeded
only by the fractious road it took to
completion—including impassioned
protests from Oregon and Nike lu-
minaries.
Knight loves all things Oregon,
and is believed to have donated
more than $1 billion to the univer-
sity, including $500 million in 2016
to launch a new science campus.
Athletics, however, are at the heart
of his life, and Hayward Field is his
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