This is an article i liked from THE TELEGRAPH (UK)
An early impression of these championships sees a long-haired Romanian with improbable flair and a refined sense of showmanship flinging himself hither and thither, flicking the ball between his legs and handing his racket to old ladies and ball boys imploring them to have a go. His defeat to the upright, utilitarian Stan Smith in the Wimbledon final 27 years ago was the death of magic in the eyes of one young boy.
The match, Gone With The Wind set out across five epic sets, was regarded as one of, if not the best the Championships had seen; how that accolade moves around. Nastase was irresistible, not least because he didn’t have a moustache and he wasn’t Australian, a nation whose champions dominated at the dawn of the Open era; Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Tony Roche and Ken Rosewall. They spoke our language. They drank our beer. Nastase did none of these things. He brought mystery to the court.
What kind of player might be regarded greater than all the hall-of-famers above? Who is the man to head a roll-call spreading across a game that has been global 100 years? Is it fair to ask it of anyone to prove himself superior in all facets of the game? Yet this is what a player must do if he is to be regarded the best of all time. This is the claim made by many on behalf of the Swiss maestro in Sunday’s final. We are on the point of witnessing a landmark in the sport. None has 15 grand slam titles against his name. Statistically at least Roger Federer fills out the greatest criteria.
Though Federer won the Wimbledon junior championship 11 years ago, few saw in that victory the future that was to come. In the past 30 years only Pat Cash and Edberg have converted junior success into senior glory. Then three years later, while still in his teens, Federer buried the legend of Pete Sampras on Centre Court ending an unbeaten run of 31 matches. It was Federer’s maiden appearance in the house to which he would himself claim squatters rights. He lost to Tim Henman in the next round. It was 2001, the year that Henman ran into 'good’ Goran and bad weather. It was the year that Federer marked our cards.
Twenty-one consecutive grand slam semi-finals and 14 major titles are the numbers that speak for Federer today. But statistics are only part of Federer’s story. The elements that elevate him still further are aesthetic and ethical. He thrills on three fronts by winning, by doing so gracefully and with elegance and style. And the clincher; he has won on all decks.
In this the age of the two-handed backhand, the baseline slog, of biceps, of grunt and sleeveless shirts, Federer says no to all that. He eschews the dark side. He is every mother’s son, head boy in the tennis academy, a stainless charmer, modestly turned out, fair in manner and deed. And when he lets that backhand go we swoon.
His command of the tennis canon, his technical mastery, provides him with the material tools to win. The brain of a surgeon married to a gladiator’s spirit complete the kit. As 'nice’ as he appears, there is no sentiment attached to the kill. The dispatch is often brutally quick.
Afterwards he rarely speaks a bad word where a good one will do. There was little to compliment in the performance of Ivo Karlovic in the quarter-final. The lumbering Croat is serve dependent. Beyond that withering bullet there is little to his game. So Federer heaped praise on the pretty motion that aced him 23 times.
When he loses he does so without exception to the better man. To come second in a Wimbledon final classified as the best of all time, losing a title he had held for five years and his No 1 ranking with it to his greatest rival must have wrung his soul dry. Yet Federer stepped aside without fuss, extending his hand to Nadal while dying inside. Both had given every fibre. Neither deserved to lose.
Nadal took the greatest prize in tennis, but Federer gained in defeat. He showed us that losing, though painful, is not necessarily failure. How can it be if you have given all you have, left nothing in the locker. None can point the finger. Federer had met his match. He could not have done more. In circumstances such as there is, nothing for it but to acknowledge the better man and come back another day. Federer did this, and in doing so he acquired immortality.
On Sunday there is history to write. He has spent the fortnight in the shadow of Andy Murray, a willing warm-up act on Centre Court before the BBC went prime time. Murray is a great British story. Federer’s tale is greater than that. It transcends national interest. He is a global phenomenon the like of which we might never see again in tennis.
Poor Tommy Haas has spent a career with his nose against the window pain of high achievement looking on at the likes of Federer, wondering what he had to do to join him on the other side. This being his 32nd year he had considered leaving the racket at home and trying something else, modelling perhaps, or playing exotic aristos from a distant land in low level American soaps. One more go he said.
In Paris he drew Federer in the year he would break his grand-slam duck at Roland Garros. Despite a two-set lead, Haas’s fate was to become a footnote in Federer’s run to a 14th slam. Here, where Federer has won five times, where all his superhero efforts are trained on setting a unique benchmark in the game, Haas met him again.
Now it is Roddick’s get rid of this line for online turn, poor lad. There is only one who can look Federer in the eye and he is holed up beneath the Majorcan sun nursing a broken family and crumbling knees. The separation of Nadal’s parents coincided with the kind of career-threatening injury Federer has managed to avoid. Who knows when Nadal will return and for how long?
Federer’s run at the top of the game is as much an act of will as physical perseverance. His reliance on timing rather than power puts marginally less stress on his bones, but there is no let up between the ears. It takes a singular soul to dog it out on the circuit year after year, living out of suitcases, hitting balls day after day, hour after hour.
And to pull it off without a hint of controversy, never once missing a bus, or kicking the car door of a teenage girl, or abusing a police officer outside a nightclub in the small hours. Federer’s idea of rebellion is to marry the girl next door and start a family.
It would have been quite a day had Murray made it to the final. Perhaps it is better he didn’t. Let Roddick be grand slam victim No 15. Murray was that man nine months ago in New York. The experience made him a better player, but not yet good enough. For anyone born beyond Britain’s shores, this year’s tournament has always been about Federer, about the first to shoot for 15 grand slam titles, about the best there has been. Sorry Ilie.
