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July 2, 2005
Perfect Federer drives Hewitt to distraction
By Sue Mott, Telegraph
Perfection
comes in only a very few guises. Cold sauvignon on a warm day, warm
shiraz on a cold day, Belgian chocolate truffles and now Roger Federer
on grass. This is the heyday of the great Swiss master, a tennis player
so supreme that he made reaching his third successive Wimbledon final
look like a matter for minimum disturbance.
His
opponent, Lleyton Hewitt, in contrast, was disturbed to the maximum.
His cross face was all screwed up in concentration, as though eating a
mouthful of chillies. This applied to both winning points and losing
them. He did the latter a little more. He pumped his fists, bashed his
thighs and smacked his shoes but nothing short of a nuclear detonation was going to make much difference to the serenity of the man on the other side of the net. Hewitt
is the second best player in the world. But as he so rightly noticed:
"It's just that the best player going around is so b***** good." Where
do you begin to discuss Federer's ethereal superiority? Watching him is
almost a religious experience. You have to reorder the universe to
accommodate the impossible nature of his talent. Never mind the name
Roger, maybe Federer's parents would have been nearer the mark if they
had christened him Gabriel. Didn't they notice the wings? There
was that shot in the first set, eighth game, when Hewitt was beginning
to crack on his service game and to achieve break point Federer played
a cross-court winner, so feather-light, so audacious, it was scarcely a
shot at all. It was a brushstroke in pastel, unlike the primary red on
poor Hewitt's face. The Wimbledon champion,
unbeaten in 35 games on grass, claims he was a "little tense" walking
out for the match. That's it. That is the extent of Federer's sporting
panic. After the match, which he won 6-3, 6-4, 7-6, he was asked when
he last smashed a racket in fury. He couldn't remember. He knew he had
been upset against Rafael Nadal in Miami, when he was extended to five
sets by the Spanish teenager, but the racket didn't break. "Good
technique on my throwing rackets. I'm also pretty good at that," he
said with a sweetly satirical smile. Occasionally,
he gave vent to a cry of frustration. It was like hearing a monk yell
dissent during vespers. Not wrong in itself, but shocking in its
unexpectedness. As for Hewitt, he was making noises like the squeaky
hinge on an oak barn door. A noise that told of unremitting effort,
terrible strain and furious resistance. This was the man who broke a
rib falling down the stairs at his new house earlier this year. He
seemed to risk popping his entire rib cage every time he returned
Federer's serve. The level of the Australian's
striving could not be doubted. He even upped his game a notch to make
his last stand in the third set. Leading three games to two, Hewitt
hauled himself to 0-30 on Federer's serve and the cathedral
surroundings of the Centre Court echoed to the hurrahs for the
underdog. He had, as the Americans put it,
emptied the bucket. But it hadn't been easy. In fact, just to achieve
that mini-milestone he had ridden into the bullets and mortar fire of
Federer's groundstrokes like Tom Cruise against the imperial Japanese
army in The Last Samurai. Neither was quite mortally wounded. But, put
it this way, the other side won. Dear old Hewitt.
"It's definitely a challenge," he said, putting as mildly as he could
the scale of the battle he faces every time he meets Federer in combat.
It was put to him: "If people lost to Federer eight times in a row,
they might be a lot more disconsolate than you are right now." It was
intended as a compliment but was not taken as one. "I don't know,"
growled Hewitt. "That's probably why I'm sitting here and you're
sitting there." The champion, meanwhile, is
sitting pretty with a berth in the final while rain prevented Andy
Roddick and Thomas Johansson from completing the other semi-final in
good time. Perhaps the winner is irrelevant. Perhaps they could agree
to share the doubles court against the world No 1. Either way, you feel
the trophy engravers are already practising their Fs. Federer
is something else. Something special. Someone to follow in the hallowed
footsteps of Fred Perry, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras by winning
Wimbledon three times in a row. Surely British tennis can market this.
It is a social tragedy that our youngsters are far more likely to be
accruing Asbos than backhands and yet here is tennis offering them
violence, cruelty, beauty, rage, range, speed and firepower. This need
not be a nice game for all Wimbledon's rambling roses. And
if today's child is interested only in the bottom line, it should
surely permeate little brains that Federer has accumulated his £10
million prize money far sooner than it would take selling hot DVDs off
the back of a lorry. Federer is the real deal.
Sweet and savage simultaneously. He could lose his crown tomorrow - any
beast in a two-horse race can lose - but you still wouldn't want to bet
against the man who can unload 125mph aces when rare danger threatens.
"This performance is definitely good enough to win Wimbledon, that's
for sure," he said. Ominously.
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