Mexico City /
couple of days ago, Roger Federer He retired from professional tennis and now an incredible anecdote comes to light; In his early days, when he was barely 10 years old and lived in his first tournament in August 1991, he lost a match against Reto Schmidliwho today is a policeman.
History was written on the clay court of the Greetings from Pratteln, a suburb of Basel, Switzerlandwhen nobody imagined that Federer would be a legend.
At that time, it was the first round of the youth tournament in this venue, in which few people paid attention to the duel between Reto Schmidli, a promise from the neighboring TC Arlesheim, and little Roger Federer, a boy from the TC Old Boys in Basel.
Reto had no problems, with a convincing 6-0 and 6-0 he humiliated Federer, not knowing that he was defeating one of the best players in the world of all time. Roger would never suffer such a defeat again.
“Frankly, I never paid attention to that fact in the following years,” Reto Schmidli, 43, tells Marca.
“Then a friend told me that Roger had given an interview to a student magazine in the United States, in which he was asked if he had ever lost 6-0 and 6-0. He replied that it had only happened once, in the tournament of Pratteln, against me,” he added.
Reto is now a police officer
Reto Schmidli is now a policeman in Basel, and is sometimes asked “wasn’t it you who beat Roger 6-0 6-0?”.
“It didn’t mean much, although I’m proud because in the end it has become a brand. Roger was playing his first tournaments, he was 10 years old and I was almost 13. I had never heard of him. Some said he had a very good touch, a good hand , but nothing more… If I had known (which would be the best), I would have kept more memories,” he commented.
His best ranking was number 40 in Switzerland, he studied psychology and since he was a fan of the Colombo series, he entered the police force.
