Roger Federer’s shadow still hangs over the Swiss Indoors in Basel – even if the world star hasn’t appeared there for a long time. The fact that Dominic Stricker and Stan Wawrinka have just surprised in Stockholm provides some relief before this year’s tournament.
Dominic Stricker came back to Basel with good memories: last year he was able to impress at the Swiss Indoors.
Pierre Albouy / Reuters
Tennis player Dominic Stricker’s most recent post on social media was more of a sigh of relief than an actual post: “What a feeling, I’m back!” He also added the emoji with the tense biceps, which is supposed to symbolize strength. The 22-year-old from Bern posted this a few days ago after picking up a win against the higher-ranked Matteo Berrettini in Stockholm.
Like Stricker, the Italian Wimbledon finalist from 2021 is currently far from his best ranking. Berrettini is in position 42 in the ranking, Stricker is only listed as number 317. A year ago at the Swiss Indoors, Stricker was in 96th place in the rankings – and seemed to be on his way up inexorably. In Basel, among other things, after a victory over the top ten player Casper Ruud, he reached the quarter-finals, in which he failed against the Frenchman Ugo Humbert.
But after that, Stricker’s career suddenly stopped working. By the most recent tournament in Stockholm he had only won 8 out of 24 games. He had to sit out for months due to a back injury. His relief at returning to the Swiss Indoors is correspondingly great: “For the first time in a long time, I played three games in a row at a good level. Now I’m excited to see how things go in Basel.”
Only one person on the entire tour is older than Wawrinka
Stricker has to lift himself up from small things. Nevertheless, he and Stan Wawrinka are the tournament organizers’ hopes next week in Basel. Romand also comes to Basel after a crisis that he emerged from in Stockholm, at the same tournament as Stricker; Wawrinka even reached the semi-finals.
But at 39 years old, he is the oldest player who still regularly competes in ATP tournaments. Only one person in the ranking is older: the 43-year-old American Ryan Haviland. He has 2 ATP points and is ranked 1589th.
New times have dawned in Swiss tennis. After years in which at least one Grand Slam title per season was common, people are now happy about side notes such as the good performances of 17-year-old Henry Bernet (ATP 940), who only won in the last round of qualifying in Basel Compatriot Jérôme Kym failed.
Stan Wawrinka is a crowd favorite not only in Basel, but practically everywhere he performs. That wasn’t always the case at the Swiss Indoors. The Vaudois had long been greeted with mixed feelings on the Rhine bend. From 2012 to 2015 he lost four times in a row in the first round, and people in Basel were already asking themselves aloud whether it was really worth advertising the tournament with Wawrinka on the official poster. Roger Federer outshone every other player anyway. But people in Basel have also become more modest in the meantime.
Stan Wawrinka made it to the semi-finals in Stockholm in the last few days.
Imago / Claudio Bresciani
The distinctive voice of the radio pioneer
One person who experienced Federer’s glory days closely is Christoph Schwegler, the voice of the tournament. The now 78-year-old radio pioneer attended the same school as Swiss Indoors director Roger Brennwald. Brennwald later hired the man with the charismatic baritone voice to present the players at his tournament.
When Schwegler greeted the local superhero with the words “Welcome home, Roger Federer,” even hardened sports fans got goosebumps. The last time Schwegler did this was in 2019, when Federer won his tenth title at the Swiss Indoors in the final against Australian Alex De Minaur. It was his 103rd and last on the tour.
Schwegler himself is a legend far beyond Basel. He achieved national fame in his original job as a radio microphone. He launched the hit parade on Swiss radio, which was broadcast for the first time on January 2, 1968. On the streets of Paris, the students were rebelling against the establishment and the norms; Schwegler saw himself as a relative of the movement that was gradually sweeping across Europe.
He says: “When I had to present the tearjerker ‘Monja’ by the German pop singer Roland W. as a top hit in my first show, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that in the long term.” After a year, Schwegler passed the show on to other hands and instead turned his attention to setting up the youth channel DRS3 (today SRF3). The media gave Schwegler the nickname “the voice”, in German the voice. He, says Schwegler, would never have done that. “It would have been blasphemy.”
“The voice” was the nickname of the American entertainer Frank Sinatra, with whom Schwegler does not want to compare himself in any way. Sinatra is one of his “Darlinks,” the preferred links that he presents to followers on his website. There is also the name of the German band Rammstein, whose music is roughly the counterpart to the honeyed “Monja” and fits Schwegler’s rebellious style better.
Schwegler has now disappeared from the radio channels. He still offers his baritone for podcasts, commercials or as a voiceover in documentaries. He continues to work as a presenter at the Swiss Indoors, even if Roger Federer, with whom he shares the tennis club of his youth (Old Boys Basel), is no longer present.
Schwegler will receive Wawrinka and Stricker with similar empathy as the Basel tennis icon once did. However, the phrase “Welcome home” will be withheld from Roger Federer, the only true offspring of this tournament. With all due respect for Roger Brennwald’s life’s work: Without Federer, the Swiss Indoors are no longer the tournament that they were a short time ago.
