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July / August 2003 issue
Roger Federer and The Racquet of Fire
Swiss Tennis Sorcerer is Basel's Very Own Harry Potter
By Alix Ramsay, Tennis Life Magazine
It’s a funny thing about grand slam finals—they
are usually rubbish. Two tense men on the verge of greatness
tend not to produce their best. More often than not the story
of the final, of how the champion got there, of what he had
to overcome, is better than the match itself. In that category,
Pete Sampras beating Andre Agassi at the U.S. Open last year
is about as good as it gets. That is, of course, unless you
are Goran Ivanisevic. His 2001 Wimbledon victory was the stuff
of fairytales.
But when it comes to the tennis, the sport played at the very
highest level in all its pure, raw, majestic beauty, good
finals are hard to find. Step forward, then, Roger Federer:
Wimbledon champion, extremely nice bloke and master of the
dark arts of tennis wizardry. His defeat of Mark Philippoussis
was swift, it was spectacular and it was a delight to watch.
He gave us three sets of artistry and we wanted more. And
yet we didn’t.
Over the course of two matches and six sets of brilliance,
he had brushed aside the muscular challenges of Andy Roddick
and Philippoussis. He was playing at such a level, so far
beyond the reach of everyone else in the draw, that none of
us wanted it to end. But the thought that Philippoussis could
extend the battle and win a set or two brought with it the
fear that Federer’s spell would be broken and that would
have been too much to bear. This was, indeed, magic.
My colleague Simon Barnes of The Times in London had watched
Federer dismantle Roddick with power, with finesse and with
touch and he was enthralled. An astute observer of sport and
a sensible man whose passion is horses—and they are not
given to flights of fancy—Barnes concluded that Federer’s
racquets were not delivered in bulk from Wilson but purchased
secretly at Ollivanders in Diagon Alley. They were not made
of Kevlar and graphite but of the wood of the holly tree with
a core of phoenix feather. This was not Roger Federer in the
semifinals; this was Harry Potter with the Racquet of Fire.
And, by crikey, he was right—I just wish I had thought
of it first.
As the tournament had rumbled on, there were no huge surprises—even
Lleyton Hewitt’s early departure had been on the cards
had we but noticed—and little by way of emotion. Much,
then, was made of an open letter to the International Tennis
Fed-
eration requesting the removal of the sledgehammer racquet
from the game. Powerful racquets produced powerful tennis,
where muscle counted for more than talent. The good, the great
and the merely pompous put their name to the letter only to
be made to look like chumps as Federer disproved their theory
over 48 hours and two matches of genius. Even Boris Becker,
a signatory, admitted as much as he marveled at the final.
For the last couple of years Federer has carried a millstone
around his neck, that of the tag of the underachiever. Given
that he is still only 21, it did seem a bit rich. At that
age most of us were still letting our mothers do our laundry
and were chatting up our fathers for a loan of the car and
bit of spare cash for spending money. Yet with Federer, there
was no other way of explaining it. Anyone who had ever seen
him play could see that he was blissfully talented but still,
when it really mattered, when it came to proving it, he failed.
A great player, but not a champion.
Just last year he lost in the second round of the Dubai Open
and was accused of not trying, of tanking and mopping up the
appearance money. The gibe hurt and he returned this year
to win the title—but we will get to all of that in a
minute. The fact is that if Federer can make winning look
so easy, he can make losing look like nothing at all. He is
too decent a man to tank and too complex a character to choke,
or to choke in the way that we supposed pundits have come
to accept it.
Federer is not afraid to win—that is for sure—and
he is not scared of losing either. And he is not one to tremble
when the pressure mounts. His Davis Cup record is near perfect—he
has won the last 20 sets he has played, a run stretching back
to 2001—and in the blood and thunder of World Group competition,
that requires nerves of steel. But Federer knows that he has
a gift. Perfection is the goal and he knows he can achieve
it. Therefore, when one aspect of his game is not exactly
as he would like it to be, he can lose. Plain and simple.
He does not know how to win ugly, a trick that Brad Gilbert
is currently trying to teach Roddick. He does not know how
to run and scrap and fight like Hewitt. He does know, though,
how to play tennis, and when he plays the way he knows he
can, he does not need to fight because no one can touch him.
When that happens, he plays flamboyant tennis and he plays
it with joy.
There were occasions in Sampras’s career when his tennis
was sublime. We knew it pleased him because he told us so,
but we never saw it in his face. Federer cannot help but share
what he does with everyone around him. He had hoped that,
should he win the Wimbledon title, he would not cry. When
it came to it, he could not help himself. He sobbed in his
chair as Alan Mills, the tournament referee, tried to congratulate
him. He lifted the trophy with tears streaming down his face
and then, just when he thought he had everything under control,
he faced Sue Barker and the BBC-TV cameras. A few moments
and a couple of choked sentences later, he looked down at
the trophy he cradled in his arms, burst into tears and ran
away. He was happy beyond his wildest imagination and everyone
was happy for him.
That it has all come together—the talent, the work, the
ambition and the results—is due to Federer himself. Honest
self-analysis is not the stock-in-trade of most players, but
Federer is not like other players. Last year he played the
best match of his career thus far to win the Masters Series
in Hamburg, demolishing Marat Safin in the final, but still
the grand slams passed him by.
Then, in the summer, Peter Carter, his former coach and one
of his best friends, died in a car crash. Federer was distraught.
Injuries and a lack of understanding about what he was trying
to do were blighting his tennis, and the outside world was
making him miserable.
Wanting to take charge of his own life, he slowly untangled
himself from the clutches of IMG. He put in place a small
group of people he trusted to run his affairs. His mother,
Lynette, is his manager; his father, Robert, is his assistant
manager; and his girlfriend, former player Miroslava Vavrinec,
is his media relations manager. Peter Lundgren takes care
of the coaching while Pierre Paganini looks after the fitness.
And that’s it—an entourage of five taking their
lead from Federer. With the support group in place, he could
turn his attentions to himself.
Passionate, instinctive and excitable as a player and a person,
he had to find a way of harnessing the emotions and the talents
to turn them into a championship-winning whole. In other words,
he had to grow up.
“I remember thinking, how do these guys do it?”
he said. “How do they go from tournament to tournament,
one after another? I had to learn to pace myself. It was as
simple as walking to the towel, counting to five—all
these little things which sound so stupid. But when you lose
a point, it’s not that easy.
“Before, I used to get impatient with myself. I was always
expecting myself to do so well. I would commentate on my own
matches; sometimes I would even do it out loud. I had to stop
that. I have grown up. I am mentally much more relaxed. I
have found it hard to find myself, that’s why I have
come to all of this rather late. But I found something deep
inside and I know I can build on this.”
Four smaller titles won this year in Marseilles, Dubai, Munich
and the grass court tournament in Halle gave him the confidence
and the reassurance that he could do it. Two weeks of magic
at Wimbledon proved to the world that he could do it. And
if, like me and the 13,999 other people on the Centre Court,
you wished that the final had been longer—don’t
worry. Federer and his Racquet of Fire will be back. This
is only the beginning.
Alix Ramsay has covered tennis for a variety of international
publications for the past 12 years. Her last article for Tennis
Life was a feature on Lleyton Hewitt in the January/February
2003 issue.
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