Roger Federer is the most comforting thing about sports right now

Last year, Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players — athletes? — ever, underwent surgery for the first time in his almost two-decade-long career. He was running a bath for his twin daughters a day after he lost to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open when he turned quickly and felt something “click” in his left knee. Federer didn’t think much of it at first; he took his family to the zoo even as his leg swelled up to sizes that legs shouldn’t be. When he got back to Switzerland, an MRI revealed that he’d torn his meniscus.

Bathgate marked the start of Federer’s most trying season yet. 2016 sucked for many reasons (understatement of the century), and one of them was that Federer missed his first Grand Slam since 1999. It was a rude awakening for fans. Holy shit, some of us realized: This guy, our guy, might not be around forever.

Abstractly, of course, we’ve always known that. Despite his otherworldly talent, Federer is not a god. He is a man. A man who is getting older. And when athletes get older, they get worse at playing sports. And when they get worse at sports, they eventually stop playing sports, and then everyone is very sad.

But these first Federer falterings were especially sad because Federer is tennis’s Best Dad. Hell, he’s sports’ Best Dad. (Even his injuries are dad-like! He hurt himself giving his daughters a bath!) When I say dad, here, I mean the good kind of dad. The one who’s there for you, who comforts you, who makes you feel like maybe there’s still a chance everything is going to be OK. Federer has been so consistent for so long that it’s hard to remember a world in which he wasn’t wearing that signature headband, swinging his signature one-handed backhanded, gliding across the court with his signature grace.

It’s that grace that sets Federer apart. He’s not really Your Dad, or even sports’ Best Dad; he’s the Ideal Dad. Your dad says, “fuck this thing,” as he kicks a lawnmower when he can’t fix it, while Federer carefully drapes his jacket over a canvas chair at Wimbledon so as not to wrinkle it. And then he proceeds to play tennis as beautifully as he will, then field questions at the following press conference.

Everything Federer does contributes to this pipe-dream image of a father figure. You, and your father, and your father’s father, will probably never be as deliberately elegant as he is. This could make another man obnoxious, but it has only ever made Federer someone to aspire to be.

He walks the line between human and better-than-human. He’ll tweet out silly jokes, sure, but he’ll also win Wimbledon wearing a monogrammed henley. He’ll make you look down at your jorts with disgust and inspire you to be better. There’s a good chance his kids think he’s a total doofus, as kids are wont to think of their fathers. But to the many of us who see the projection of a man rather than the daily man in full? He’s the ultimate.

Federer’s Ideal Dad-ness was partly what made last year’s Wimbledon match between him and Marcus Willis — the No. 772-ranked wild card player who somehow found himself playing the G.O.A.T. on Centre Court — so delightful. Willis showed up to play Federer wearing Federer’s Nike gear; it was like tennis Inception.

Willis lost quickly, but Federer hung back after his victory to let the crowd cheer for the young man’s Cinderella story. The whole thing was incredibly sweet and made very clear what this man means to this sport and to so many fans. Even those who have to play him.

Yesterday, when Federer took the court in the second round of the US Open, I felt a sense of calm come over me with each of his familiar strokes. He lost the second set, was down in the third, and while I started to get twinges of “Oh god, tell me he’s not going to blow it,” I never truly believed he would. He might not win the whole tournament; I’m not shocked when he loses these days. I just still never assume he will.

When athletes retire from individual sports like tennis, or golf, or NASCAR, it feels much more significant than when a great player on a great team hangs up his or her cleats. Teams breed a different kind of fandom — one that feels less intimate.

If you’re a football fan and you love, say, the Falcons, there’s a good chance you can root for the Falcons your whole life (assuming the NFL exists as long as you do, that is). But if you’re a tennis fan, you can’t root for Federer forever, because Federer won’t be playing forever. He’s going to stop at some point, and we’re closer to that day now than we are to the day he first won a major title.

In the first round of the US Open this week, Federer faced the young Frances Tiafoe, an exciting player from the U.S. in an age we sure could use some new blood in tennis and could seriously use some new American blood. It was a close match, but Federer won. And for the first time, I was kind of bummed about it. I wanted to see Tiafoe, this young guy, spread his wings and have a shot at soaring to the heights of greatness that Federer has been able to reach.

Which is sort of a lovely feeling. To know that our Ideal Tennis Dad has accomplished so much that, at this point, just having him out there is enough. I don’t need much from him anymore, and it’s probably time to see some newer hands start to hoist trophies. But man, it’s such a delight to still have Federer around.