Kate Middleton Won't Join Roger Federer for Their Charity Event

(Image credit: Photo by Laurence Griffiths / Getty)

published 21 September 2022

Catherine, the Princess of Wales, will no longer be attending the charity event she was hosting with tennis legend Roger Federer on Sept. 22.

The official royal mourning period lasts until seven days after Monday's funeral, meaning all unrelated official appearances are canceled.

As Town & Country reports, this unfortunately means that Princess Kate will also be missing Federer's last professional tennis event before his recently announced retirement.

Back in August, it was announced that the royal and the athlete would be co-hosting a fundraiser whereby all proceeds from tickets to the Laver Cup Open Practice Day in London would be donated to Action for Children and the LTA Tennis Foundation.

The Practice Day event is of course still going ahead, and the venue website for the Laver Cup still states that proceeds will benefit those two organizations—however, the princess just won't be in attendance like originally planned.

This must be bittersweet for her: Of course, she was very close to her husband's grandmother and must be glad to observe the mourning period, but she is also a huge tennis fan, and a patron of the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (where Wimbledon is held).

She plays as a (skilled, I'm sure) amateur, has long-standing relationships with a slew of tennis players, and has even passed her love for the sport onto her children George and Charlotte, who have been reported to be taking lessons for years (including from Federer himself!). Her eldest, George, even got to attend Wimbledon for the first time in 2022, as well as hold champion Novak Djokovic's trophy. Still, there will be plenty more tennis-based events in the future.

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.