Roger Federer and his legendary career

Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic or Andy Murray leave little doubt how much effort they are expending in every shot, each lunge along the baseline, every rapid-fire sprint forward. You hear the grunts, the laboured breathing, and even the high-pitched squeak of their sneakers as they quickly change direction.

Roger Federer, though, is silent. His sneakers don't squeak. It's as though he floats above the court.

Federer reimagined the game of tennis. No one had ever played it with his combination of speed, power, creativity and grace. Not Laver, not Borg, not McEnroe, not Sampras. The Swiss possessed preternatural, almost celestial gifts – the kind of innate talents that the novelist David Foster Wallace claimed were "exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws".

Federer's most sublime tennis had to be seen, experienced, to be believed. It was always difficult to describe. Ethereal comes closest. Not of this earth.

Lithe and even slimmer in person than he looked on TV, Federer exuded panache and elegance. His strokes weren't just textbook, they were PhD-in-art-history beautiful – more like brushstrokes than tennis shots. The Swiss could create on the fly; indeed he seemed to revel in the need to come up with a shot no mere mortal would think of. His singular brand of tennis confounded both opponents and fans, leaving one group immobilised and the other slack-jawed.

Yet Federer was much more than a balletic performer who danced across the stage displaying his artistry. What made Federer more than an artist, and one of the greatest champions in any sport, was the deep competitive fire he brought to the game. Federer may have appeared to float above the court – and even the game itself – but he was an earthbound athlete with the rare kind of competitiveness that only burns in the greatest.