Former Swiss tennis player Roger Federer speaks to students during commencement ceremonies at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S. on June 9, 2024.Ken McGagh/Reuters
There are thousands of commencement addresses on college campuses each spring. Most are unremarkable and go unremarked upon. But occasionally, one gets people talking and gains traction online. That was the case with the speech given by retired tennis champion Roger Federer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., on June 9.
Federer, who dropped out of school in his native Switzerland at the age of 16 to play professionally, noted early in his remarks that he was not an obvious choice for a commencement speaker.
“Keep in mind, this is literally the second time I have ever set foot on a college campus,” he told the more than 2,000 graduates.
After some warm-up jokes about beer pong (which is said to have been invented at a Dartmouth fraternity party) and a few shoutouts to local institutions (“I got a chance to hit some balls with my kids at the Boss Tennis Center. … I also crushed some chocolate chip cookies from Foco”), Federer got down to business and offered the graduates some tennis lessons that doubled as life lessons.
The part of the speech that has caught on with audiences far beyond the Ivy League environs of the Dartmouth campus – prompting numerous TikTok videos, many of them set to inspirational string music – was his reframing of his years of dominance on the tennis court.
“In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80 per cent of those matches,” Federer said. “Now, I have a question for all of you. What percentage of the points do you think I won in those matches?”
The answer was 54 per cent.
“In other words,” he said, “even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.”
He added: “The truth is, whatever game you play in life, sometimes you’re going to lose. A point, a match, a season, a job.”
A video of Federer’s speech has garnered more than 1½ million views on Dartmouth’s YouTube channel, putting it in the company of earlier commencement addresses that have left a lasting impression.
In 2011, Conan O’Brien, a Harvard University graduate, stood behind the same tree-stump lectern at Dartmouth and roasted the idea of elite higher education to uproarious laughter. O’Brien’s speech continues to be watched as a comedy master class, with 4.8 million YouTube views.
A 2005 speech by writer David Foster Wallace to the graduating class of Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, titled This Is Water, circulated online as a transcript before social-media days and, in 2009, was published as a book.
Another noteworthy commencement speech, known as Wear Sunscreen, was not delivered as an address but rather written as a 1997 column for the Chicago Tribune by journalist Mary Schmich. (It was the speech Schmich would have given, if asked.) Her piece inspired a hit spoken-word song by Baz Luhrmann, Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen), and was also published as a slim book, Wear Sunscreen: A Primer for Real Life.
Federer’s decision to quit school seemed to work out for him. Over a 25-year career, he won 103 tour singles titles, including 20 Grand Slam titles, and was acknowledged as one of the greatest tennis players. Two years after his retirement, Dartmouth awarded him an honorary doctorate, citing his work as an athlete, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
Grabbing a racquet toward the end of his speech, he left the Dartmouth graduates with one final lesson: “Okay, so, for your forehand, you’ll want to use an eastern grip. Keep your knuckles apart a little bit. Obviously, you don’t want to squeeze the grip too hard.”
Then he added, with a smile, “No, this is not a metaphor! It’s just good technique.”