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September 25, 2006
Federer's Latest Title: Doubles Specialist
By David MacCarthy, Tennis Week
Roger
Federer is a turning into a pre-eminent doubles specialist. What?! You
say. Well, I'm not talking about doubles as in a tandem pairing on the
same side of the net, a la Bob and Mike Bryan. And Federer hasn’t
created a new twist on the old theme by becoming the "anybody" in the
famous pairing of John McEnroe and anybody as the best doubles team of
all-time.
But
Federer has been a specializing in a certain kind of doubles lately,
and if he continues as this type of doubles specialist, he’ll
singularly establish himself as the best player of all-time.
So what sort of doubles specialist is he? As we
all witnessed at this year’s U.S. Open, Roger Federer became the first
man ever to win the Wimbledon-U.S. Open double three consecutive years.
And not only that, Federer is now the only man to win Wimbledon and the
U.S. Open in the same year three times in total! That’s the fantastic
part; the bad news for the rest of the tour is that he’s made it look
fairly easy. Federer has had to go five sets just once in sweeping 41
matches at the Big W and in the Big Apple in the last three years. He
has lost a total of 12 sets (half of them tiebreaks). And yet to
counter those rare set losses, he has served up a dozen bagel sets
along the way. He’s beaten the best of the rest during this stretch,
including Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi, and Lleyton Hewitt.
Winning one Wimbledon or U.S. Open can be the
crowning glory for any man's career. The greats hunger for more, and
Federer has demonstrated his ravenous feeding frenzy at the world’s
greatest tennis events, already surpassing the total number of
Wimbledon titles won by such luminaries as John McEnroe, Fred Perry and
Bill Tilden. Roger has bested the U.S. Open championship tally of Andre
Agassi, Rod Laver, and Jack Kramer. Federer has become a master at
successfully defending his grandest achievements, doubling as only he
has, and doing it three straight years (with a four-and-counting streak
of titles at Wimbledon).
To put Federer's mastery in perspective: Laver
twice won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the same year, coincidentally
the two years he won the Grand Slam. But the man many still consider
the best ever was never able to successfully defend his U.S. titles.
Jimmy Connors won five U.S. Open titles, but only once successfully
defended. John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl both scored a hat trick of
consecutive Open crowns, but Lendl never won Wimbledon, and McEnroe
only earned one of his Wimbledon titles the year he was three-peating
in New York. Bjorn Borg holds the modern record for consecutive
Wimbledon titles at five, but he left New York empty handed each time.
Pete Sampras is still the benchmark for winning major titles. He won
seven Wimbledons and five U.S. Opens, and twice won both titles in the
same year — 1993 and 1995. However, the only year Sampras was able to
defend in New York, 1996, he did not come in to the tournament as the
reigning Wimbledon champion. Despite Sampras’ impressive hording of the
two biggies for the better part of the decade, he now trails Federer in
the doubles category of copping Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles in the
same year.
Laurie Dougherty, the first Brit to claim a
U.S. title, was the inaugural member of the prestigious Wimbledon-U.S.
Open double club more than a century ago, in 1903. Bill Tilden was next
to win Wimbledon and the U.S. crown in the same year, 1920, and he
doubled that feat by winning both titles the very next year. But alas,
no three peat in 1922 for Big Bill. Ellsworth Vines earned his
membership in the Wimbledon-U.S. doubles club in 1932. Fred Perry could
have preceded Roger in his three peat, as he won Wimbledon from
1934-1936, and won U.S titles in 1934 and 1936, but lost in 1935 to
Wilmer Alison.
Grand Slammers gain automatic entry into this
exclusive doubles club, and Don Budge preceded his 1938 Slam year by
sweeping Wimbledon and the U.S. in 1937. But he turned pro in 1939,
leaving it to a huckster named Bobby Riggs to keep the two majors in
the hands of an American. In the post war years, Jack Kramer, Frank
Sedgman, Tony Trabert, Ashley Cooper, Neale Fraser, Roy Emerson, and
John Newcombe all won both crowns in the same year once. Rod Laver, as
a double Grand Slam winner, of course triumphed at both, in 1962 and
1969. Jimmy Connors (1974 and 1982), John McEnroe (1981 and 1984),
Boris Becker (1989), and Pete Sampras (1993 and 1995) are the other
players in the Open era to simultaneously rule the roost in London and
New York.
So there you have it, an impressive list of
double slamming winners at Wimbledon and the US Open: Tilden, Budge,
Perry, Laver, Newcombe, Connors, McEnroe, and Sampras. And ahead of
them all on this list is the player who is so good at this form of
doubles, he has had to branch out into new territory, making a name for
himself as a tripler: Roger Federer, the first triple, double champion
in singles at the sport's two biggest events!
David MacCarthy is a freelance writer and
tennis statistician, originally from New York and now based in the San
Francisco Bay Area. He has been an enthusiastic tennis nut since the
1970s.
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