René Stauffer

I grew up in Weinfelden in northeastern Switzerland before getting on the road. After the "Kantonsschule" in Frauenfeld and a few years of jobbing and traveling, I came to sports journalism quite by chance, where I was able to combine my love of sports, travel and writing. I came to tennis writing very young, so young that I still witnessed Björn Borg's last tournament victory in 1981 (in Geneva), was catapulted into the international tennis (and tennis writers) world at the 1982 WCT final in Dallas. My first Grand Slam trip brought me the historic victory of Yannick Noah in Paris (1983). And after Heinz Gunthardt, Jakob Hlasek, Mark Rosset, Martina Hingis and Patty Schnyder I was lucky enough to get to follow Roger Federer's career from A to Z up close.

In the 27 years from 1996 to 2022, I conducted countless exclusive interviews with Roger, saw hundreds of his games and attended, among other things, 101 Grand Slam tournaments, countless Davis Cup games, ATP and WTA tournaments. From 1981 I worked in the sports department at Blick for nine years, then for three exciting years at the specialist magazine “Sport” and then in 1993 I joined the Tamedia editorial team in Zurich, which also publishes the Tages-Anzeiger – always my favorite newspaper – and the Sunday newspaper SonntagsZeitung. Personally I used to play Icehockey, than Tennis and Golf, I started skiing at a very early age and still like doing it, like most Swiss do (if they don't want to be Number 1 in World Tennis...).

I was lucky to find my beautiful wife Eni – we married 1986 – who supported me lovingly and was very understanding about the difficulties of my schedule and travellings. After some years in Zurich, we have been living in the canton of Thurgau since 1995 and are parents of a great daughter, Jessica.  I also reported on countless events away from tennis, including six Summer Olympics, three Ryder Cups as well as ice hockey and swimming world championships and am very greatful and humble to receive so many great feedbacks on my work as well as some nice awards.

I saw Federer play for the first time when he was 15 and interviewed him the same day for the first time. In 2006 my first book about the exceptional player, “The Tennis Genius”, was published in German and soon translated in the USA under "Quest for Perfection". “Roger Federer – The Biography” followed in 2019, which immediately climbed to number 1 among non-fiction books in Switzerland, stayed in the bestseller lists for six months and also met with great international response. I completely updated and expanded this book in 2023, writing six new chapters about his desperate struggle to prolong his tennis career, his operations and his realization that it was no longer worth it – as well as the stroke of luck that he was able to experience a fairytale farewell to professional tennis at the 2022 Laver Cup.

My career as a traveling tennis journalist ended almost at the same time as Roger Federer's, at the end of 2022, after 42 years in professional Sportsjournalism and especially in Tennis. When I said goodbye to professional journalism, he sent me a very personal and heartwarming video message. Many thanks to you too, Roger. It was a privileg and a great pleasure.