This article is a part of the Remember the Titans series. To know more about the series, go through the introductory post by clicking here.
Sports can be wild. And sports can be beautiful too. They rarely come together but when they do, it conjures - well, there's no other word for it - magic. Given the status of cricket in India, I wouldn't dare to challenge the popularity of the game but I still believe that as a sport to watch, there can be no better choice than tennis. Apart from the gargantuan amount of physical endurance and agility it requires, tennis is also about being sublime and tactful - at times, players take on gladiatorial avatars, battling it out with such intensity that it defies human limits. And if tennis is to be talked and written about, who's better to illustrate the cover page then tennis' equivalent to Sachin Tendulkar - only more gifted, complete and iconic - Roger Federer. This article will go in rewind - the period now to the period then. For the biggest assertions need to be got out of the way lest they weigh heavily on my writing later. I will find detractors, but not many, if I say that as of today, Roger Federer is on the road to becoming the most dominant professional athlete EVER - in any sport, in any discipline. I can hear the voices of dissent and cries of other names - Muhammad Ali, Pele, the redoubtable Tiger Woods and even tennis' own Rod Laver and Pete Sampras. But understand this - the dominance I talk about is not just about being the best and the greatest in the sport you play - its about influencing the game and influencing all who play and watch it, its about taking the game and taking professionalism to new levels, its about making victories look easy and defeats look graceful, its about the awe other players see you with and the cheers you draw from the crowd in any place you play. That's dominance - when the sport itself seems to revolve around you. Federer has achieved all of that, and more.
With sixteen grand slams and eyes set on a lot many more, Federer is unparalleled as far as numbers go in tennis. He will soon go past Sampras in the count of number of weeks at the top. He already has a benumbing number of consecutive finals and semi-finals - 18 of the last 19 finals and each one of the last 23 semi-finals. He is at a stage when it might be a good idea to put his name in the list of synonyms for the word 'champion' in the thesaurus. Federer's game is like a poetry - balanced, beautiful and appearing to mean something much more than what we actually see. It is in many aspects, absolutely flawless. For years after the era of Sampras and Agassi was past, Federer was left all alone, sans any real rivals. All eras are earmarked by great rivalries - something for which tennis is very widely known - Bjorg-McEnroe, Connors-Llendl, Sampras-Agassi - but there seemed to be no one willing and competent enough to engage into the same with Federer. After years, he finally has a pack of some challengers and some pretenders - Murray, Nadal, Djokovic, Del Potro and a few others are all fine players and on their day, have dismantled the champion a few times. Of course the huge stature of Federer still looms large over the tennis circuit but its becoming increasingly difficult to really predict who's going to win tournaments - especially non-Slam ones. Nevertheless, the saga of Federer still continues and he still has to waltz further with history and keep dates with destiny. And we will be more than glad to watch it with starry eyes.
The first time I heard of Federer's name was when he defeated Pete Sampras - the player I revered then - in his own backyard, the Wimbledon, in the fourth round. Television screens all over the world began flashing his pictures - the young, handsome Swiss with those queer banded hair. Not many realized it was a significant moment in tennis history. It was a young gun snatching the flag of tennis supremacy from an old warhorse. A champion was humbled, and another had broken out of the cocoon. In the brief period that lapsed between Sampras leaving the scene of tennis and Federer stamping his authority all over it, three players emerged in a race for the numero uno spot. You can't blame them for not knowing that their happiness would be short-lived and soon they will outclassed by someone very, very special. Hewitt, Safin and Roddick - each coming from a land which had traditionally dominated tennis - would soon be overwhelmed by a man coming from Switzerland - a place marked in the smallest font on tennis maps. And ever since he has arrived, there's been no hurdle, no hiccup, no looking back for Roger Federer. A decade past, he is still tennis' most potent force. Irresistible and invincible.
Federer has improved with each passing year. He began pocketing slams and within no time at all, people were already talking about Sampras and his most sacred record. Tennis rarely sees complete players and it had been quite a few years since there had been one before Federer came. Sampras had a typical American game - a strong serve and an incredible volley. Agassi was acclaimed for his baseline play and rocket return of serve. Some like Goran Ivanisevic could fire aces at will. Federer, unlike these players was a player who was developed not vertically at one point of the tennis skill spectrum but horizontally across its entirety. He used the entire court, the entire baseline and the entire range of shots - he sliced, he punched, he lobbed, he served with panache and hit amazing winners with ease. Like Sampras, he always seemed to do just enough to outdo his opponent. Wimbledon and US Open were his for five successive years. The Australian Open crown was snatched in 2005 by a rejuvenated Marat Safin but Federer retrieved it in 2006. It was only triumph at Roland Garros that eluded him. However, unlike Sampras, who was always vulnerable on clay and lost very frequently to lesser known players in early rounds, Federer's performed extraordinarily even on clay. It was only his misfortune that by the time he had begun his race for Grand Slams, another player had anchored himself firmly on the throne of Roland Garros. Clay has always been quite different from other surfaces - the game slows down, and different skills are sought for mastering it. The kingdom of clay had appeared to shun Federer and elect its own king - Rafael Nadal.
Here finally was a rivalry that gave us what was missing in this era of tennis. Though Federer still dominated the other Slams and surfaces, Nadal repeatedly made a mockery out of him on clay. And then came 2008 - a bumpy ride for Roger. Mind it, he still reached all the four semi-finals, three finals and won one grand slam but over the years he had set such astronomically high standards for himself that even all this was not enough to satiate him or his fans. He lost to a determined Djokovic in the season's first slam at Melbourne and in straight sets to Nadal in the French Open but he was still not disturbed as he stepped onto his favourite surface at Wimbledon. But, here a defining moment was just waiting to happen. In an epic five-setter (which by the way, has an entire post devoted to itself on this very blog), Nadal beat Federer - and within weeks, took away the number one ranking from him. Was this the end of the champion? Would the ever-so-calm persona of Federer ever forget this terrible mental wound? Although he won the US Open later, he once again lost to Nadal at the next slam - another five-setter. And for the first time, the world saw tears pouring out of the eyes that never even blinked at historic moments. People thought Federer had become weaker, but there could be no bigger mistake - the tears and those losses only made him stronger. It showed, as I have said in an earlier post that Federer was not a God as people has started believing him to be. He was better than God - he was human. And he knew what those tears were for. He had just let everything out in those tears - his frustration, his uncertainties, his weaknesses. Federer knew this was the last time his confidence was to be shaken. And we all know how he just swallowed the rest of 2009. No doubt, he was aided by the defeat of Nadal in France and his absence at Wimbledon, but Federer had his eyes only on the altar of greatness that was beckoning to him. He won the French. He won the Wimbledon. He nearly won the US Open but found Del Potro in top form in the finals. He won the Australian Open 2010 - the first slam of the new decade. He has now steered clear of Sampras' record and is setting new limits of his own. He is remodelling tennis and its history. He is a both a loving husband and a proud father now. He is the darling of the crowd. He is the most recognizable face of tennis. He has the whole media licking out of his fingers. One wonders what is left to be achieved and what keeps Federer going then...
To understand the answer, you must first understand Roger Federer as a man and as a phenomenon, not just as a tennis player. Federer is no longer playing for this generation - he is simply laying ground for the coming generation. Higher the ground, he feels, the better they will be able to serve tennis. He is in such a communion with his tennis that he can't fail even if he wants to. He may seem fallible at times and have the occasional bad game - but you can be sure, that he will bounce back. Federer is just one of those people who have greatness flowing in their veins - there has to be a delibrate dialysis if you want to seperate the two. Like Tendulkar, Federer is not only about tennis. More than the greatest tennis player, he is the greatest man ever to have played tennis. Some people would find no difference between the two. Some people would probably be more awed by the former qualification. But, for the others like me, the difference is the reason why we believe in the man called Roger Federer.
