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Saturday, July 16, 2005
Saturday Diary: Pick up a racket and feel, momentarily, like Roger Federer
By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
I recently spent a couple of hours in front of the TV and found myself saying over and over, "How can anyone do that?"
Reality show? Yes, indeed. It was the Wimbledon men's final.
Roger Federer of Switzerland dismantled Andy Roddick, the good-natured
American star with the 150-mph serve and bullwhip forehand.
Federer took Roddick apart surgically, like Muhammad Ali dazzling a club fighter or Tiger Woods carving up a Saturday foursome.
The American sports culture is such that tennis is only a blip on the
radar, I know. I even heard a Pittsburgh sports announcer pronounce
Roddick's name as "Roderick," as if he'd never heard of him.
And Federer? This polite, 23-year-old Swiss who speaks four languages
(his English is better than most Americans') is just another foreigner
to most people.
That's a shame, because the majority of sports fans don't understand what he represents.
Those who play know he may be the greatest in history.
He's certainly the most aesthetic, a silent assassin gliding around the
green rectangle like a wraith, conjuring up winners under pressure with
such grace he almost looks casual.
OK, he seems to say: Maybe now would be a good time to whip a topspin
backhand crosscourt passing shot two inches from my opponent's racket
and an inch inside the sideline. He did that to Roddick.
What, he almost appears to shrug, the rest of you can't hit those shots?
No. No one can.
I've been playing for many years -- usually not too well -- and I study
the top players to learn from them. (It doesn't help much.)
But I've never seen this caliber of stuff before. I've even taken to
breaking down Federer's strokes frame-by-frame on my VCR in the quest
to understand. I suspect I'm not alone.
Even top-flight pros realize this fellow is special. Mats Wilander,
himself a former Grand Slam champ, said he would like to be able to
play like Federer for one day, to see how it feels.
Where does that leave us lesser mortals?
I'll tell you: Awed but inspired.
To me, tennis is the purest sport -- and the most difficult.
It's just you and the other guy. No coaching. You have to figure out
what to do, when and how. You have to attack your opponent's weaknesses
and protect your own. You have to control lots of variables, from spin
and pace to the weather and court surface and your own nerves. And you
have to be in shape to be any good at all.
All of which explains why tennis is no longer popular, at least in America (it's huge in other parts of the world).
Public tennis courts are disappearing, and I often see the ones that
still exist in a state of disrepair. Sometimes on beautiful afternoons,
whole batches of courts are empty.
Frankly, I think America has grown too fat to play the game anymore.
We'd apparently rather watch poker on TV. Poker! It says volumes about
our society that a card game is now considered a sport.
I think what happened is that during the tennis boom of the 1970s,
people watched Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe and the game
looked easy.
But when fans went out and tried to play, they realized it was hard.
There's a lot of running and sweating, and it's damned difficult to get
that ball over the net and in the court.
Eventually they gave up.
Tennis has its niche today, but it's shrunk considerably. It pains me,
because the game is one of the few in which almost all the fans are
also players. To me, that's how sports should be: participatory.
I've never understood, for example, how 300-pound couch slugs who
couldn't run 10 yards get off criticizing an athlete for botching a
play. They don't play, and can't, so where's their frame of reference?
In tennis, players always have one. I'm not particularly good, but I
think I can understand how hard it must be to, say, battle fatigue
through five sets at the French Open, perhaps the most grueling sports
event in the world.
I can imagine trying to return Roddick's howitzer serve or grinding out
a baseline duel with Andre Agassi, the fittest man on earth.
A friend of mine used to say when he missed a shot: "Those guys are
gods." He meant the pros who can hit that shot 100 times in a row while
we couldn't do it twice.
But we had something to strive for.
Years later, I'm still striving.
Tennis pundits often bemoan the power game, saying big boomers are
ruining what should be a battle of wits and style as much as brute
force. There's truth in that.
Yet here in the age of ballistics comes Federer, who plays a sleek
all-court game like one of the greats in the days of wood rackets. He's
not big -- just 6-foot-1, 177 pounds -- and he doesn't have the monster
shots of some.
But this man is one of those rare talents, like Tiger Woods, who can
transcend his own sport and elevate it. If he doesn't get hurt or
bored, he will go down as the best ever. Plus, he's a genuine nice guy.
I'm hoping casual fans take notice the next time he's on TV. Maybe a
few people will even dig out their old rackets and head for the courts.
Just don't get discouraged if you can't do it like he can. I sure can't, but I'll always be out there trying.
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