Hell, for Roger Federer, is talking about life after tennis. For years now, the questions have crept in as Federer, 35 and troubled by injuries, seemed to be drifting off the court. Reporters demanded to know: When will you stop? What comes next? Maybe a farewell tour before you wander away into the Alps? All the sporting world seemed to want, after nearly two decades of idol worship, was a forwarding address for where to send a thank-you note.

But then, a few months ago, something happened. Something extraordinary. Defying all expectations, Federer won this year's Australian Open. His 18th major title (the most ever for a man in his sport) and his first Grand Slam in five years. Among the 18, this one was special. “Perhaps the most special,” he told me. It came after he'd taken a months-long break, his first significant time away from tennis since he was a teenager, in part because of a knee injury he'd suffered during the last Australian Open (while drawing his daughters a bath, of all things), but also because he'd been feeling worn out. So to return at his age, after no competitive matches for months, and triumph over his greatest rival, Rafael Nadal, on one of the sport's grandest stages… The feeling was ecstasy.

It couldn't have come at a more pivotal moment. Early in the tournament, during an on-court interview, Federer acknowledged his underdog status—reminding fans that the only thing he'd won lately was *GQ'*s Most Stylish Man (an online competition in which readers carried him to victory over Kanye West and Ryan Gosling). “At least I won something,” he said wryly, referring to a 14-month trophy drought—and this from a guy whose life is essentially predicated on winning, shattering records with no grunts, no sweat: 302 weeks as world number one. In many eyes, the GOAT. Still, as the 17 seed in Melbourne, he'd known he didn't have a shot. To reach the quarterfinals would have been a success. But then it happened.

This Is Your Most Stylish Man of 2016 The people—and a lot of tennis fans—have spoken.

“Winning Australia, it solves so many problems,” he said. And so, feeling generous, perhaps a little insulated by success, he extended an invitation for a visit. High up at his retreat in Switzerland, just five days after the final, to talk about tennis and not-tennis, at this beginning of yet another chapter in his career. He didn't just quiet the hecklers by winning—he changed the narrative. Millions of fans got to feel a story line shift under their feet, and Federer felt it, too. So who is he? What is he? I went to the mountains to find out, at the same time equipped with the single question he'd least want to answer, the one that keeps his fans twitching like so many addicts between hits: After all these years of pulling off the impossible, how many more could we really expect?

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“Winning Australia, it solves so many problems.” Federer says it's “Perhaps the most special” Grand Slam of his career.

Southeast of Zurich, Valbella is one in a string of Alpine villages in the Swiss canton of Grisons. Only an hour's drive from swanky St. Moritz, Valbella is humdrum, frankly boring. Paddocks with livestock, mugs of hot glühwein, air filled with ski fans' clanging cowbells. It's Switzerland. Roger and his wife, Mirka, built their mountain chalet as an escape from city life, the tour, the outside world. They prize the region's quiet, its “normality,” as Federer put it, a quality hard to find nowadays, he said.

“I think the normality of Roger is what surprises everybody,” said Darren Cahill, former pro, current coach of women's number four Simona Halep, and ESPN commentator. “For somebody who's achieved what he's achieved, I think a lot of people build up an exterior wall to block it out. But he hasn't got a wall at all.”

What, then, is “normal” in the Swiss Alps? What is “normal” for the greatest men's❖ tennis player of all time?

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To start, Federer looked relatively normal when we met, and definitely Swiss: dark turtleneck sweater, crisp wool pants, black boots. Hiking is Federer's favorite hobby (his only hobby), but snow was falling and his legs were tired from Australia, so we went out to lunch, for raclette (at his suggestion), a traditional Swiss dish for après-ski, basically a plate of melted cheese. Not what I expected. But what did I expect, really? On the court, Federer is known for almost inhuman focus. Humorless determination. A steel-cut perfectionist with a stevedore's nose, the finest forehand of all time, and the coiffure of James Bond circa Timothy Dalton. In the stiffest of all countries, why should he be any different? But frankly, he was so easy going from the start, so relaxed, for a second I thought he was stoned. (He wasn't stoned.) He drove us to the restaurant in his Mercedes. We chatted about our families. I wound up telling a story about the time I did heroin by accident—look, it was in South Africa, and Federer's mother is from South Africa, and I was trying to find some common ground out of the gate, the way you do when you're riding in a gargantuan vehicle with a global celebrity you've just met—and he barked out laughing. Federer, a big laugher, who knew? Though it got to a point, by mid-meal, where I started to get suspicious—was it for show, to play the Everyman? Who likes melted cheese like the rest of us? (Maybe he was stoned?) This is a guy, I'd learn, who still makes reservations at a nearby public tennis facility rather than build his own private court. Think about that. Consider the fact that Federer has made over $100 million in career prize money, never mind endorsements. Now imagine being the local dude who has to kick Roger Federer off a tennis court because his practice session goes a little long.

At the restaurant (“We come here all the time for the kids' birthdays or just to sit on the terrace”) he was stopped twice for selfies before we even got to the front door. More than photos, people wanted to tell him what the win in Australia had meant to them personally—what they felt while they'd quaked and wept in front of the TV. Roger loved it. “I think a lot of people were hoping that I'd win,” he told me quietly, when we finally sat down. “It seems that a lot of them were super happy.”

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Then he laughed again, and his shoulders caved in, his whole body leaned forward while his face lit up with mirth. In case any of this comes as a surprise to you as well, here are a few other things that may be new.

Roger Federer: is afraid of horses. (“Isn't everyone?” he said.)

Roger Federer: only gets angry when it involves punctuality. (“I get edgy when I'm late.”)

Roger Federer: likes fine art, but it can give him a headache.

Roger Federer: doesn't just like movies, he loves them. He “lives them,” he said. He can't imagine falling asleep during a movie. “How do people do this?!” In fact, the night before the Nadal final in Melbourne, he and his family watched Lion, the story of a boy who accidentally journeys alone to Calcutta, then after 25 years returns home to find his family. It's a tearjerker—“and by the end I was a wreck!” Federer shouted, laughing. “And then I was like, ‘Is it good to be emotionally so wound up? After all, tomorrow may be a very emotional day!' ”

Roger Federer: liked La La Land, except for the ending.

Roger Federer: prefers happy endings.

Roger Federer: never expected this level of success, he said, none of it, never. “Tennis brought me these things,” he said emphatically, referring to…pretty much everything in his life. “That's why I'm so thankful to tennis. It broadened my horizon. If I hadn't been a tennis player, I'd probably be living a life in Basel, doing some sort of job. I'd have a smaller perspective.”

“You have a better perspective when you're older. But sometimes you want it more because you know time isn't on your side.”

Above all else, though, Roger Federer: loves his family, with “family” being a widely inclusive term. Mirka is his rock. She's a former professional tennis player herself, and they got together in 2000. “Here we are, 17 years later, and we did it all together,” he said with wonder. His parents, he's very close to. They still get so nervous watching him play they can't sit next to each other at tournaments. (At home his mom tells the TV before every serve, “Hit an ace! Hit an ace!”) Moving outward through the rings of affection, next comes his team, who might as well be family, and then the tour, “a second family,” he said, meaning the other players (who've given him the tour's annual sportsmanship award 12 times), and then their teams, and finally the tournament directors, the organizers, the hired hands, the ball boys and girls.