With 4 Tennis Master’s Cup titles, 13 Grand Slam singles titles, 14 ATP Masters Series titles and an Olympic Gold Medal, Roger Federer is nothing if not a champion. Between Wimbledon in 2005 and the 2007 US Open, Federer appeared in 10 consecutive Grand Slam men’s singles finals and has won 19 of these titles in his career. Federer currently hold the record for most consecutive Grand Slam singles titles (an incredible 19) and currently ranks as the number 2 tennis player in the world; he held the top spot from February 2004 to August 2008 and won the coveted Laureus World Sportsman award in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Roger Federer was born in August 8, 1981 in Basel, Switzerland. He spent most of his childhood in Munchenstein, Switzerland near the French-German boarders with his parents- Swiss-German Robert Federer and South African Lynette Federer. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and was even given the honor of meeting Pope Benedict XVI while playing at the 2006 Internazionali BNL d’ Italia tournament held in Rome. Although Federer considers French-Germa as his native language, he can speak German, French and English fluently.

At the age of 6, Roger Federer had shown great potentials of becoming an athlete. The beginnings of this great tennis player started with the weekly group lessons at the age of nine. When he reached the age of ten, he was already working with a private coach. When he was a teenager, Federer also showed talent in football and interests in playing cricket, but eventually decided to focus on tennis. He enjoyed watching Marcelo Rios play as a youngster. To this day, he still supports his hometown club, the FC Basel, and plays cricket during his off-time. At fourteen, he won all the national championships of the groups in Switzerland, and was given the rare chance to train at the Swiss National Tennis Center in Ecublems. In 1996, he joined the ITF junior tennis circuit. The year 1998 marked his final year as a junior player and the start of his career in tennis pro. In this same year, Federer won the prestigious junior Wimbledon and the year-ending title of the Orange bowl and was recognized as the ITF Junior Tennis champion of 1998.

While most tennis players are more at home on one type of court or another, Federer’s versatility has made him famous. One sportswriter has said that tennis players can be clay court specialists, grass court specialists, hard court specialists; or they can be like Roger Federer. He is best known for his powerful groundstroke, as well as for being a skilled volleyer and baseliner. Federer uses a hybrid grip which takes elements from the semi-western and eastern strokes.

In his career, Roger Federer has won a whopping 57 singles titles. He was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the year 2007. Federer is engaged in charity work outside of his tennis career. He founded the Roger Foundation in 2003, to promote sports to young people and to help disadvantaged persons. At only 27 years old, we may have not yet seen the best of Roger Federer yet.