The day Roger Federer couldn’t stop laughing at CNN correspondent’s Spanish phrases during press conference
Faced with the challenge of answering questions in English, Federer turned to a familiar strategy: speaking his native Spanish and speaking to the camera.
Federer opened his first press conference as a two-time Grand Slam winner with an amusing anecdote when he couldn’t stop smiling and joking with the press.
“I couldn’t answer,” Federer said. “It was a good laugh. I got so tired and nervous … I couldn’t even understand half of it. They said I said ‘I couldn’t answer’ … I didn’t say I couldn’t answer. I said I couldn’t understand most of the questions.”
Roger Federer was at his best when trying to out-crazy CNN’s Ana Cabrera
The press conference, however, wasn’t all laughs. The 38-year-old Federer appeared at times to be in good spirits, but he also seemed irritated and at times frustrated by the lack of information he was getting from the press conference.
The day before, he said: “I tried to read everything I could in the papers, but I couldn’t understand it at all.”
Federer, like many of his generation at his prime, is a bilingual – and he often speaks in Spanish at press conferences.
He appeared to appreciate the challenge posed by an international audience.
“The best way to play a press conference is to be at a lower rate,” he said. “When you’re at a higher rate, you say less, you don’t say anything. When you’re at a lower rate, you say the same things, but you feel more comfortable with the microphone in your hands. You feel less nervous.”
While he was often at his best when trying to out-crazy CNN’s Ana Cabrera, Federer also spoke his own language at times at the press conference – making good use of its many idioms.
Roger Federer