After winning the 92nd professional tournament of his career on Sunday and ahead of arriving this week as favourite for the Wimbledon title he first lifted in 2003, it is hard to imagine a better advertisement than Roger Federer for the perils of premature retirement.

An outside pressure and debate about ‘getting out at the right moment’ seems to surround every great sporting career once it reaches middle age and, amid the five-year wait for an 18th grand slam title, Federer faced repeated calls to hang up his racket.

The problem was that it was always so much more about us than him. So treasured were the memories of Federer in his pomp that it was disproportionately painful to see him lose to the likes of Kei Nishikori, Sergiy Stakhovsky, Federico Delbonis or Daniel Brands, as he did during a four-month period in 2013.

Federer himself always looked perplexed by the suggestion that he should stop and that was because he understood the most basic and important tenet of sport so intuitively well. It was that what ultimately mattered was not the outcome but his enjoyment of the competition, lifestyle and the enduring attempt to be the very best thirtysomething tennis player he could be.