Do we like Roger Federer?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent for decades, with a foundation doing real work in southern Africa. He loses a point for keeping a sponsor that climate activists called out.
Born in Basel in 1981, Federer turned pro in 1998 and won Wimbledon in 2003, the first Swiss man to take a Grand Slam singles title. He finished with 20 majors and a record 302 weeks at world No. 1 by the end of 2012. His career also had a lot of longevity: he won an eighth Wimbledon at 35.
His farewell at the 2022 Laver Cup in London is the moment most fans remember. He played his last match as a doubles partner with his great rival Rafael Nadal, and both men were in tears. Federer said he was happy he could ring Nadal and talk about anything, which tells you how the rivalry ended up.
The harm check comes up clean on the searches we ran. Nothing turned up from Federer attacking LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or people of colour, and no slide into conspiracy theories or culture-war grievance. We didn't find him working with or promoting anyone who pushes that stuff. The record on his views here is thin, so that is the absence of anything bad rather than a long list of stands taken.
The one stoush is climate. In January 2020, Greta Thunberg shared a 350.org claim that Credit Suisse, his sponsor, had put $57 billion into companies looking for new fossil fuel deposits. Federer said he took climate change very seriously and was grateful to the young activists for pushing everyone to examine their behaviour. He also promised a donation to Australian bushfire victims. Credit Suisse called being singled out misleading and uncalled for. Critics wanted him to drop the sponsor, and the reports we read don't say he did.
The good stuff is substantial. His foundation, set up in 2003, funds early learning in Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Switzerland. In 2025 it reported over 300,000 children having had preschool education through its South African work. He keeps turning up to talk about it, urging leaders to meet the remaining need by 2030.
He has stayed gracious about the game after it. At the Australian Open's first formal opening ceremony in January 2026, he said it was super important to be grateful to the stars who came before him. Seven months later he became a Hall of Famer and said fame was never the goal. So we'd support him: kind for decades, with one sponsor deal to raise your eyebrows at.