bodyType

customContents

entityId

printArticlePageQuery

filter

article

body

urlAlias

articleSectionsContent

articleSeoArticle

articleSourceHeaderArticle

contentSchemaRenderContent

contentSubHeadlineContent

contentHeadlineContent

mainImagePrintArticleArticle

authorBlockPrintArticleArticle

contentSponsorTagContent

articlePianoPaywallContent

scmpYoutubeContent

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

query printArticlePageQuery(
  $entityId: String!
  $customContents: [CustomContentInput]
  $bodyType: BodyFormatTypeEnum
) {
  article(filter: {entityId: $entityId}) {
    entityId
    body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
      json
    }
    urlAlias
    ...articleSectionsContent
    ...articleSeoArticle_3o8td4
    ...articleSourceHeaderArticle
    ...contentSchemaRenderContent
    ...contentSubHeadlineContent
    ...contentHeadlineContent
    ...mainImagePrintArticleArticle
    ...authorBlockPrintArticleArticle
    ...contentSponsorTagContent
    ...articlePianoPaywallContent
    ...scmpYoutubeContent
    ...hooksTrackPageViewArticle
    id
  }
}

fragment articlePianoPaywallContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksPaywallPromiseContent
}

fragment articleSectionsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sections {
    value {
      ...helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection
      ...entityLink
      name
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment articleSeoArticle_3o8td4 on Article {
  ...hooksArticleSeoArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersGetArticleTypeArticle
  entityId
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
  summary {
    text
  }
  subHeadline {
    text
  }
  body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
    text
  }
  keywords
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  topics {
    name
    entityId
    id
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  images {
    style(filter: {style: "768x768"}) {
      url
    }
  }
  readingTime
}

fragment articleSourceHeaderArticle on Article {
  urlAlias
  ...entityLink
}

fragment authorBlockPrintArticleArticle on Article {
  ...defaultArticleDateContent
  ...authorNamesArticle
}

fragment authorNameAuthor on Author {
  ...entityLink
  name
  entityUuid
}

fragment authorNamesArticle on Article {
  authorLocations
  authors {
    entityId
    location
    ...authorNameAuthor
    id
  }
}

fragment blockquoteQuoteContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment contentHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  socialHeadline
  ...contentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
}

fragment contentNewsletterWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
    id
  }
  sections {
    value {
      relatedNewsletters {
        ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
        id
      }
      id
    }
  }
  ... on Article {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment contentSchemaRenderContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...blockquoteQuoteContent
  ...imageContent
  ...inlineWidgetContent
  ...photoGalleryWidgetContent
  ...scmpYoutubeContent
}

fragment contentShareWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  shortUrl
  socialHeadline
  headline
}

fragment contentSponsorTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentSubHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  subHeadline {
    json
  }
  summary {
    json
  }
  ...contentSchemaRenderContent
}

fragment defaultArticleDateContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksArticleDateUtilsContent
}

fragment entityLink on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  __typename
  entityId
  entityUuid
  urlAlias
  urlRedirect {
    toUrl
    id
  }
  application {
    entityId
    id
  }
  ... on Section {
    fullSectionPath {
      entityId
      id
    }
    parentSection
  }
  ...helpersAppBarVariantBase
  ...helpersApplicationBase
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersAppBarVariantBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsLiveArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...helpersSectionContent
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersApplicationBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
}

fragment helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection on Section {
  name
}

fragment helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle on Article {
  entityId
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  disableOffPlatformContent
  sponsorType
  published
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
}

fragment helpersCheckIsLiveArticle on Article {
  flattenTypeIds
  liveArticle {
    status
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    paywallTypes {
      entityUuid
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle on Article {
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle on Article {
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostiesPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsStyleArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersGetArticleTypeArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        entityId
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter on Newsletter {
  entityId
  name
  alternativeName
  description {
    text
  }
  summary {
    text
  }
  homepageDescription {
    text
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle on Article {
  authors {
    types
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersStyleSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersUseContentSponsorContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    sponsor {
      ...sponsorTagSponsor
      name
      type
      id
    }
    id
  }
  ... on Article {
    sponsorType
  }
  ...helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent
}

fragment hooksArticleDateUtilsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  createdDate
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
}

fragment hooksArticleSeoArticle on Article {
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle
  entityId
  headline
  socialHeadline
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
  images {
    generic_og: style(filter: {style: "og_image_scmp_generic"}) {
      url
    }
    styles(filter: {styles: ["og_image_posties_article", "og_postmag", "og_image_style", "og_image_scmp_analysis", "og_image_scmp_explainer", "og_image_scmp_editorial", "og_image_scmp_fact_check", "og_image_scmp_debate", "og_image_scmp_live", "og_image_scmp_obituary", "og_image_scmp_opinion", "og_image_scmp_review", "og_image_scmp_series", "og_image_scmp_generic"]}) {
      url
      style
    }
    type
  }
  urlAlias
}

fragment hooksContentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        name
        entityId
        description {
          text
        }
        id
      }
    }
    ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  }
  flag
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  ...hooksContentHelperContent
}

fragment hooksContentHelperContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle
  ...helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle
  ...helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle
  flag
}

fragment hooksPaywallPromiseContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
}

fragment hooksTrackPageViewArticle on Article {
  entityId
  publishedDate
  headline
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  entityUuid
}

fragment imageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  ...checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent
}

fragment inlineWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentNewsletterWidgetContent
}

fragment mainImagePrintArticleArticle on Article {
  images {
    title
    url
    isSlideshow
    size_652x446: style(filter: {style: "652x446"}) {
      url
    }
  }
}

fragment photoGalleryDialogContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment photoGalleryWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...photoGalleryDialogContent
}

fragment scmpYoutubeContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  publishedDate
}

fragment sponsorTagSponsor on Sponsor {
  name
  type
  images {
    url
  }
}


sections

types

disableOffPlatformContent

sponsorType

published

headline

socialHeadline

authors

images

publishedDate

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

keywords

topics

readingTime

authorLocations

entityUuid

Peter Neville-Hadley

The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings, by Geoff Dyer. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Despite its title, Geoff Dyer’s The Last Days of Roger Federer is not a book about tennis, but rather, as the 63-year-old writer of other equally hard-to-classify non-fiction puts it, about “things one comes around to at last, late in the day, things one was in danger of going to one’s grave without having read or experienced”.
Much of the work is in very short sections, resembling a scrapbook of ideas around this topic. It’s a wide-ranging meditation on decline, on comebacks and on failing abilities, including the failing ability to detect one’s own failing abilities.
So far, so glum. But Dyer’s outlook is mostly matter-of-fact and overall one of irritable positivity. He’s often drily humorous, and at times elegiac.

The book is also about the impossibility of knowing when repeatedly reluctant joints, spine or neck will finally insist that last week’s regular tennis game was, in fact, the last. It’s about too how life may unravel when greatness comes early and when retirement happens young.
There were Battle of Britain fighter pilots grounded at 20 simply for having improbably survived to that age, and for whom life was never as exciting again. For footballer George Best, it was all over at 26 (although there was an 18-month comeback).
‘The internet is a crime against humanity’. Author on his Net book
Dyer’s observations of the everyday – the realisation that the contents of a book recently read have already been forgotten, the concern for how to make the best of remaining time – will have those of a similar age leaping from their chairs in shocked recognition at his precise capturing of entirely familiar niggling worries, regrets and states of mind (if their leaping days are not already over).
As Dyer points out, there’s an overall lack of control over circumstances even among those who attempt to manage their decline.
“You plan carefully, do everything correctly and then, at some point, something unpredictable, random, and entirely unforeseeable happens. You fix it. You continue on until the next setback […] You make all this effort, go to all these lengths, and then at some point, whatever you have done, you run out of options. You run out of life.”

The book’s perspective is distinctly male, with Dyer’s preferences and prejudices at its core, including a taste for occasional experimentation with drugs and a shoulder-mounted chip about the British class system.
There’s much on the career arcs of tennis players and boxers, but also those of favoured writers, composers, artists, jazz musicians and rock stars: Martin Amis, Tennyson, Keith Jarrett, Wagner, John Coltrane, Jack Kerouac and many more.
Much space is given to the apparently never-to-retire Bob Dylan, long past his prime in performance. As Dyer explains tartly, “People go not to see Bob Dylan but to have seen him.”

There’s also material on quitting large projects, which leads into thoughts on whether Anthony Powell’s 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time (published between 1951 and 1975) is actually funny.
“Neither witty nor entertaining except in that passing-the-time sort of way that is almost synonymous with wasting time, it seemed entirely devoid of merit.”
And nor is Robert Musil’s substantial The Man Without Qualities (1930) worth the effort. Nor Proust, whose In Search of Lost Time (1913), at 1,267,069 words, is the longest novel that exists.

Some of these, he concludes, should have been tackled when he was in his 20s. “Strange, the way it was easier to read difficult books when one knew less about books and reading.”
Late in the book is passing mention of a recent minor stroke, which perhaps spurred the title. But Dyer is here to stay.
“I’m not knocking on heaven’s door any time soon. I’m not going anywhere but if I were I’d be going out on my shield even if the shield, in my case, is a desk.”
Haunting memoir of a fractured Hong Kong and life on the edge
Defining his retirement would anyway be difficult. “If part of the job is sitting in a chair at home with your feet up, reading, then the difference between work and retirement is imperceptible.”
Dyer, although self-admittedly a curmudgeon, fails to mention the late-life pleasure of being insistently grumpy, but perhaps that’s because he didn’t wait until later life to indulge himself.
He does write about the dangers of becoming grand in old age, and Post Magazine would have liked to have asked him more about this, but none of several requests for an interview was graced with a reply.
A lost opportunity to hit the ball back over the net while he still can.


From Roger Federer to Bob Dylan, a look at decline, comebacks and failing abilities

Roger Federer after losing his men’s doubles quarterfinals match on the ninth day of the 2021 Wimbledon Championships at The All England Tennis Club in Wimbledon, southwest London, on Wednesday, July 7, 2021. Photo: TNS

The cover of Geoff Dyer’s book.

Geoff Dyer’s outlook in his book is mostly matter-of-fact and overall one of irritable positivity. Photo: Getty Images

Dyer’s observations also include the Battle of Britain fighter pilots grounded at 20 simply for having improbably survived to that age, and for whom life was never as exciting again. Photo: Getty Images

Much space is given to Bob Dylan, pictured here at Hyde Park on July 12, 2019. Photo: Getty Images

Magazines

PostMag

Books

The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings by Geoff Dyer is not a book about tennis but about the ‘things one comes around to at last’
The author dives into the careers of notable names, and examines how life may unravel when greatness comes early and retirement happens young


Through examples like tennis great Federer and musician Bob Dylan, Geoff Dyer meditates on decline, comebacks and failing abilities in his new book.


Ageing society

Books and literature

Roger Federer

From Roger Federer to Bob Dylan, a look at decline, comebacks and failing abilities

The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings by Geoff Dyer is not a book about tennis but about the ‘things one comes around to at last’ The author dives into the careers of notable names, and examines how life may unravel when greatness comes early and retirement happens young

The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings by Geoff Dyer is not a book about tennis but about the ‘things one comes around to at last’

The author dives into the careers of notable names, and examines how life may unravel when greatness comes early and retirement happens young