|
July 6, 2006
Ancic sunk by sheen of rainbow warrior
By Simon Barnes, The Times
THERE are certain essential skills you need
if you wish to be a Wimbledon champion. You need to serve well, you
need to be undismayed by the quirkiness of grass, you need to be able
to deal with the sepulchral hush of Centre Court on match point, the
most forbidding arena in sport. But just as important as everything
else, you need to be able to play the rain. Yesterday, Roger Federer showed that he can play the rain as well
as he can a human opponent. In a quarter-final punctuated by two
hour-long delays, Federer was able to come out each time and take the
game farther away from an opponent less skilled in the art of
rainmanship. Mario
Ancic, of Croatia, has the distinction of being the last man to beat
Federer at Wimbledon. However, that was four years and 26 matches ago,
the most recent of which was yesterday’s 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory for the
Swiss. Federer has yet to drop a set at these championships and there
were periods when you thought it was impossible that he would ever lose
a game or, for that matter, a point. Federer said that he surprised himself in the match “plenty of
times” with the phenomenal level of his play. Those three fours in the
scoreline stand as a testament to a proud and feisty opponent who,
although he had no chance at all, was not the type for lying down. The first rain break came at 2-2 in the first set. One hour
and one minute later, Federer came back on court and straightaway broke
Ancic to love. He broke again in the first game of the second set and
the rain came at 3-2. It was a heaven-sent chance for Ancic to regroup
and come out blasting. That’s exactly what he did, but Federer still
reinforced the break. For Ancic was now caught in the classic Federer trap. He was
aware that he had to play his very best tennis to have any chance. Thus
he was forced into trying for something extra on every shot — more
power, must hit the corners, must find the crazy angle. And suddenly he
was overhitting and missing and Federer was cruising out of sight. After rain comes sun; the end of the storm is traditionally
celebrated by the skies with a rainbow. And Federer, still down on base
earth, I promise you, became a man dispensing rainbows. It seemed that
every winner was struck with a different form of rainbow parabola. There was the big, arcing top-spinner that looks as if it must
go long but which impossibly arches down at the last moment. There were
the little dinks and dobs — baby rainbows that crept smiling over the
net, landing miles from where Ancic and his big feet were pounding. And
there were the medium-range rainbows, often coming at bizarre and
extraordinary angles — at times, it seemed, almost parallel to the
baseline as Federer reached in front of his body and scooped the ball,
impossibly early, almost in line with the damn net. Ancic was a man drowning in rainbows, bewitched, bedazzled and
bebuggered, occasionally stopping still to watch and wonder and to
accept with heavy shrug and sigh. At one point he raised his racket
shoulder-high to applaud his opponent back to the baseline. When
Federer is in that kind of form, there is little you can do but lie
back and enjoy it. But, all the same, in the wonder of Federer there is a faint
feeling of vulnerability. The champion is always the most vulnerable
person in his sport; everyone else can win, but he can only lose what
he already has. Everyone is looking for the first sign of self-doubt,
the first indication that fear is sneaking into his life, for the
moment when the champion balanced on the high wire looks down and feels
his head swim with vertigo. Federer has been wonderful, brilliant, phenomenal, and you
wonder how long he can go on. He already has a serious problem with
Rafael Nadal, who outmuscled and out-hustled him in the final of the
French Open. What lies behind the serenity of Federer’s game-head? Are
the first seeds of doubt beginning to sprout? Has Time — the enemy that
has defeated every champion that was ever spawned — begun to whisper in
his ear? How much longer before Time finds a new challenger to confront
him, before Time begins to unravel his power and his serenity?
But
the rain fell and the rain stopped, and the rain fell and the rain
stopped, and Federer got stronger and Federer got stronger, and in the
end there was no room for doubt in anyone’s mind. If there had been any
doubt outside my own imagination, it now lay buried beneath a glorious
precipitation of rainbows.
|
