That doesn't mean, of course, that he isn't as competitive as ever or doesn't want to win a 21st major championship－above all, No 9 at Wimbledon, after it slipped away despite two match points in 2019－or his first Olympic singles gold at the Tokyo Games next year.

Or win any tournaments, for that matter, which would push him closer to Jimmy Connors' professional-era record of 109 trophies (Federer has 103).

The Swiss is still good enough, after all, to be ranked No 3－h(huán)aving spent a record 310 weeks at No 1, he is currently behind top-ranked Rafael Nadal and No 2 Djokovic－and to go 53-10 with four titles in the season just passed.

If it seems as though the rest of the world is insisting it needs to know when and how retirement will arrive, Federer insists it's not something on which he expends a lot of energy. Not anymore, anyway.

"I mean, I don't think about it much, to be honest," Federer said. "It's a bit different (now) that I know I'm at the back end of my career. But I feel like I've been toward 'the back end of my career' for a long, long time."

So much so that when he got sick during a skiing trip in January 2008 with what eventually was diagnosed as mononucleosis, he vowed to stay off the slopes, a decision he stuck to, although not without some regret.

His children－twin daughters, 10, and twin sons, 5－all ski, and he and his wife, Mirka, have a home in a resort in his native Switzerland.

Yet Federer sticks to his role as "the chief 'getting the kids ski-ready' operator guy".

"I was like, 'OK, you know what? That's a sign. I'm going to stop skiing, because I don't want to get hurt at the back end of my career. Maybe I have another four good years left in me. This was 12 years ago now.

"So it shows you how long ago I've been thinking: 'Maybe I have another four years. Maybe I have another three years. Maybe I have another two years.' ... I've been on this sort of train for long enough for me not to actually think about it a whole lot," he said.

"But sure, sometimes with family planning, discussions with my wife, we talk a little bit sometimes. But never like 'what if?' or 'what are we going to do?' Because I always think, like, we have time for that and then we'll figure it out when that moment comes."

Even his agent, Tony Godsick, who has represented Federer since 2005, raises the topic.

"It would help make my job easier," Godsick said in a telephone interview. "I don't want to know for my own personal travel. Or I don't want to know to have the scoop before anyone else. I want to know so I can plan. I mean, he won't go on a retirement tour, but I'd like to have some advance notice, maybe throw some more cameras around when he's out playing, so we can capture some more footage."

Godsick pauses, then spaces out the next five words for emphasis: "But. He. Really. Doesn't. Know."

"I really do think he has the flexibility to actually not decide ... until he feels like it's the time. And that will come when Mirka says, 'I can't do it anymore,' and 'I can't be on the road with the kids,' and 'The kids are not enjoying it.' Or his body might say, 'Hey, Rog, stop pushing me so hard,'" Godsick said.

"Maybe it's a time when he realizes on the practice court he doesn't either have the motivation or the ability to get better. And at that point, then maybe he says, 'I certainly have squeezed all the juice out of this lemon in terms of innovating and getting better.' And I don't think that time is there yet. Which is good news."

Associated Press