Roger Federer, The Best Ever
As I marvel at the box score, I am sorely disappointed that I missed the Wimbledon final earlier today: 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14.
77 games! 16 to 14 in the 95 minute final set!
In my experience, grueling as it is to play basketball or soccer at a high level despite fatigue, one can muddle through, whereas the precision demanded by tennis only intensifies late in a match, especially at the All England Club: grass courts lend themselves to a server’s game where holding is everything, and a single break can decide the match.
David Foster Wallace once wrote a masterful article about Roger Federer wherein he captured the skill necessary to play at this level.
Imagine that you, a tennis player, are standing just behind your deuce corner’s baseline. A ball is served to your forehand — you pivot (or rotate) so that your side is to the ball’s incoming path and start to take your racket back for the forehand return. Keep visualizing up to where you’re about halfway into the stroke’s forward motion; the incoming ball is now just off your front hip, maybe six inches from point of impact. Consider some of the variables involved here. On the vertical plane, angling your racket face just a couple degrees forward or back will create topspin or slice, respectively; keeping it perpendicular will produce a flat, spinless drive. Horizontally, adjusting the racket face ever so slightly to the left or right, and hitting the ball maybe a millisecond early or late, will result in a cross-court versus down-the-line return. Further slight changes in the curves of your groundstroke’s motion and follow-through will help determine how high your return passes over the net, which, together with the speed at which you’re swinging (along with certain characteristics of the spin you impart), will affect how deep or shallow in the opponent’s court your return lands, how high it bounces, etc. These are just the broadest distinctions, of course — like, there’s heavy topspin vs. light topspin, or sharply cross-court vs. only slightly cross-court, etc. There are also the issues of how close you’re allowing the ball to get to your body, what grip you’re using, the extent to which your knees are bent and/or weight’s moving forward, and whether you’re able simultaneously to watch the ball and to see what your opponent’s doing after he serves. These all matter, too. Plus there’s the fact that you’re not putting a static object into motion here but rather reversing the flight and (to a varying extent) spin of a projectile coming toward you — coming, in the case of pro tennis, at speeds that make conscious thought impossible. Mario Ancic’s first serve, for instance, often comes in around 130 m.p.h. Since it’s 78 feet from Ancic’s baseline to yours, that means it takes 0.41 seconds for his serve to reach you. This is less than the time it takes to blink quickly, twice.
The upshot is that pro tennis involves intervals of time too brief for deliberate action. Temporally, we’re more in the operative range of reflexes, purely physical reactions that bypass conscious thought. And yet an effective return of serve depends on a large set of decisions and physical adjustments that are a whole lot more involved and intentional than blinking, jumping when startled, etc.
Even a description as expert as that hardly conveys what’s going on to anyone who’s never stared down a 100 MPH+ serve. Here’s what I recommend if you want to appreciate what these guys are up against. Stand across a ping pong table from the friend you know who is best at the sport. Hit a parabolic shot to his forehand, ask that he smack the return as hard as possible, and try to get a paddle on it. It’ll take 20 or so tries before you succeed. Consider that to be successful as a professional tennis player the serve must be more than met — it must be crushed back at one’s opponent. Try that out against your friend. I doubt you’ll ever succeed, but if you do, jog around a track for four hours, and then repeat your attempt at a crushing, precision return. You’ll finally begin to understand what it’s like to play in the final at Wimbledon.
Though I missed yesterday’s match, I’ve seen enough Roger Federer performances to know that he entirely deserves his status as the winningest Grand Slam performer of all time. As a kid, I came along a bit too late to root for Bjorn Borg, but I rooted for Connors against McEnroe, Lendl against Edberg, Edberg against Becker, Sampras against Agassi, Jimmy Connors again for that glorious US Open with the yellow racket, and Agassi against Sampras.
When Roger Federer came along, I never warmed up to him as I did past favorites, but nor did I doubt that he was the best tennis player I’d ever seen. It wasn’t enjoyable to watch him, it was beautiful — boring at times, but mostly so impossibly fluid, elegant and perfect that you couldn’t help but marvel no matter how many matches you saw.
Congrats on 15, Roger.
You can’t be the GOAT if your main rival owns you. Rafa Nadal owns Federer in Grand Slam finals; therefore, Roger Federer cannot be the GOAT.
— dth · Jul 6, 08:21 AM · #
I generally agree with your description of Federer’s play (impossibly fluid, elegant and perfect) but this match had really nothing to do with that. It was a classic Wimbledon mens final, big serve vs big serve. Ultimately, Roddick made a few too many unforced errors, and Federer only broke him once. It wasn’t a very pretty or elegant or fluid or graceful affair.
— Matt Zeitlin · Jul 6, 12:39 PM · #
Yeah the difference between this years ending and last was night and day.
— pc · Jul 6, 01:18 PM · #
“Masterful.” I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
You probably meant to say, “masterly.”
— Jamey · Jul 6, 01:35 PM · #
dth,
Huh? Discounting the French and clay, which you have to do since it might as well be a different sport, Nadal and Federer are 2-2 in Grand Slam finals. Overall Federer has a ton more titles where Nadal doesn’t even make the final.
— eric k · Jul 6, 03:38 PM · #
i don’t understand why clay titles should be discounted. yes, it’s a better surface for nadal, but federer hsan’t been able to touch nadal at that surface; meanwhile, nadal has been at least competitive with federer on his preferred surface. that doesn’t count a little bit for you? i’ll ignore the calumny that clay isn’t tennis—that’s brutally false.
and, at any rate, how quickly everyone forgets federer’s fifth set choke at the aussie open. probably the most interesting characteristic of federer’s, when compared to other elite-of-the-elite athletes (jordan and tiger, say), is that his mental strength is relatively iffy, particularly when facing nadal. of course, he’s such a gorgeous, beautiful player that 99% of the time it hardly matters, but when it does…
— dth · Jul 6, 07:02 PM · #
The reason clay is treated as an outlier is because it is:-) There is a long history of clay court specialists winning the French and all time greats who never won there. Tennis on clay is simply a different game than tennis on grass or asphalt.
Nadal and Federer are 2-2 in the non clay majors they’ve played, but Federer has orders of magnitude more majors because of all the times he’s won when Nadal doesn’t make the finals. Those count agsainst Nadal since he lost in those tourney’s. I’d hardly call losing one final with a collapse a history of cracking under pressure, 1 data point doesn’t make a trend.
— Eric K · Jul 6, 08:28 PM · #
it’s not. i grew up playing on clay, and comparing me and my brother (who did likewise) to people playing on hardcourts, i think we ended up with more well-rounded games—we just couldn’t hit through the court. practically the entire european continent grew up on clay also, and i daresay many of the comparatively stylish games of european players is clay-influenced. yeah, a ton of clay specialists have won the french, but a ton of flukey victories permeate the aussie open.
it’s true that nadal has only recently gotten the kind of all-court game necessary to get deep into finals, and it is true had nadal and federer collided earlier in nadal’s career, federer likely would have beaten nadal more often. while nadal’s victory over federer in the aussie open is one data point, it’s also the most vivid one. have you seen murray play federer, aside from the 08 us open thrashing? murray takes it right to federer, and federer is uncomfortable with that—it was why i was very interested in a murray-federer match.
part of the reason roddick made that match so epic was that roddick was able to abandon his baggage and simply play aggressively and take federer out of his elegant game. as it happens, roddick doesn’t have the tools in his arsenal to beat federer—the underrated part of that match was the 50 or so aces federer piled up—but his mental approach was spot-on, and something other players would do well to emulate.
— dth · Jul 6, 11:56 PM · #