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March 20, 2006
Not Even Inspirational Blake Can Overcome Federer
By Bill Dwyre, Los Angeles Times
There will be lots of superlatives in this story. There is no choice. It is about Roger Federer.
The
news is that he won his third straight men's singles title Sunday at
the Pacific Life Open, a tournament of major importance in the world of
tennis that just happens to take place close enough to Los Angeles to
create lots of traffic on the freeways to the desert for a couple of
weeks in March.
OK, so Federer winning isn't exactly news. If he hadn't won, if James Blake had done the unthinkable and beaten him in the final, now that would be news.
There
is a saying in sports, about apparent lopsided matchups, that that is
why they play the games. With Federer, they probably shouldn't. He is
so good, his matches become exercises in foregone conclusions. You
don't go to watch or to keep score. You go to commiserate with whomever
he is playing. You know they will be left with a demolished ego. You
just hope for no pulled muscles.
Tennis is a fringe sport. It is
not quite golf, which is a bigger fringe sport. But it certainly has a
counterpart to Tiger Woods in Federer. The sports are different, in how
they are contested and how the greatness of their stars are measured,
but Federer certainly gives his sport a Woods-like figure in results
and swagger.
Picture a cool, sunny day in the desert at the
Temple of Charlie Pasarell, also known as Indian Wells Garden, a crowd
of 14,610 and an American player with a heart-warming story and a
ranking in the world's top 10 for the first time, playing on the
biggest stage of his life, the final of a Tennis Masters Series
tournament.
You could almost feel how badly these tennis fans
wanted Blake to win. If they cared enough about tennis to pay the
prices for tickets to this event, they knew his story. They knew about
this young African American, who idolized Arthur Ashe, who went to
Harvard for a couple of years and did well in school and on the
collegiate tennis circuit.
They knew about his career, heading
forward nicely, being abruptly halted during a practice session in Rome
in 2004, when he raced to get a shot from his practice partner, Robby
Ginepri, and crashed into the net post.
He suffered broken
bones in his neck, spent several nights in the hospital, with his
longtime coach and friend Brian Barker sleeping in the other bed in the
room with him, and then went home to recover.
At home, he ended
up with a condition called Zoster, which left him with vision and
balance problems and partial paralysis. Then his father died.
His ranking slipped into the mid-100s before he could even physically gather himself for a comeback attempt.
So they came out Sunday to see if Cinderella could keep the slipper on.
They
cheered and stomped and whistled as Blake went for it, banging his way
to a 4-1 lead in the first set, two service breaks ahead.
And
they watched in wonder as, in less than four minutes, Federer got two
games back and, soon, was receiving as Blake served at 5-6. That game,
as much as anything Federer has done at Grand Slams or in Davis Cup
matches, defined what he is on the tennis court. One phrase might be:
other-worldly.
On the first point, Blake caught Federer deep and
hit a perfect drop shot to Federer's backhand side. Most mortals
wouldn't have even tried to get to the ball. Federer not only ran it
down, but caressed it softly back over the net, with enough spin that
Blake, had he not been standing and watching near the baseline, in
shock that Federer even got to the point, had no chance anyway.
Then,
at love-40 and Federer's first set point, Blake approached behind a
perfectly angled shot deep in Federer's backhand corner. Again, a young
Carl Lewis couldn't have run this one down, but Federer did, and at the
last second, lunged and flicked a shot low, just to the right of the
reaching Blake at the net, and on the sideline.
The average Joe
weekend player, if he could even get to that ball, couldn't make that
shot once in 100 tries. Other tour pros would go about five of 100.
Suddenly,
the set that was Blake's wasn't. And the crowd that was looking for
drama, story lines, heated competition, had none of it. As reality set
in, it was as if the air was sucked out of the stadium. Federer had
spoken, and his was the last word. As it almost always is.
The second set was 6-3, the third 6-0. And if that wasn't enough, there was still one, unexpected Roger moment left.
In
the post-match ceremony, in which they introduce the mayor and thank
the ball boys, Blake was handed the microphone and revealed that, while
he was in the hospital in Rome, he got at least one note that he still
considers special. From Roger Federer.
So there you had it.
Just another day from the superstar of the sport of tennis, who,
undoubtedly, on the way to the airport for his next tournament, will
rescue five children from a burning building.
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