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July 3, 2007
Federer is a shining beacon in the gloom
By Paul Hayward, Daily Mail
This year's Wimbledon,
the new Green
Zone in the war on
allegedly homicidal
neurosurgeons, has
been ruined by balsa wood
Brits, climatic incontinence
and suffocating security, but
it can still be redeemed by
Roger Federer, surely the
finest artist in all of sport.
If you want one luminous human
quality to shine through the drizzle
and the fear, it's Federer's capacity
to use a tennis racket as something
more than a piece of military hardware.
His grace, his agility, his
poise. The sodden throngs may
depart the garden party wet,
dispirited by British failure and
cursing our former Prime Minister
for indulging his Messiah complex
in Iraq, but they can't leave
Wimbledon claiming not to have
seen greatness on the lawns.
The deities hand you £50 and say
you can buy a ticket to watch one
individual in any sport before the
Reaper rings your bell. A stampede
to the fairways to watch Tiger
Woods would start pretty swiftly
and it would be clever not to stand
in the way of the aficionados
sprinting off to see Cristiano
Ronaldo or Ronaldinho (both on a
good day) in football or New
Zealand's Dan Carter on a rugby
paddock.
But if creativity, subtlety and
deftness are the measure of an
athlete's visceral appeal, then
there is no choice but to seek out
the Swiss paragon who fingered
away his tears in 2001 when, as a 19-year-old Centre Court debutant,
he conquered Pete Sampras
in five sets and ripped America's
flag from the game's most sacred
ground.
Most casual watchers of games
and pastimes recoil from repetition.
The not-him-again syndrome
afflicted Sampras even as he was
playing the most sublime attacking
tennis many of us had ever seen in
his three-set demolition of Andre
Agassi in 1999: his penultimate
triumph in a run of seven Wimbledon
victories in eight years.
The feeling took root that day
that men's tennis would never
again be played so thrillingly, until
the promise of Federer's impertinent
win over the Centre Court's
Greek-American landlord was
confirmed with his graduation to
champion in residence from 2003-
2006: a sequence that seems sure
to glide up alongside Bjorn Borg's
record of five consecutive titles
from 1976-80, though there will be
no easy pickings from Federer's
quarter-final opponent Juan Carlos
Ferrero, who destroyed Janko
Tipsarevic yesterday.
Tipsarevic bears a tattoo that
claims, via its author Dostoyevsky:
'Beauty will save the world'.
And that seems a good hope to
cling to as strawberry vans are
searched, concrete blocks are forklifted
in front of ornate gates and
people cower beneath brollies in
a taxi queue that consumes a
good 45 minutes' worth of English
stoicism.
Well, to save the world we might
really need beauty plus good
counter-intelligence and a change
of British foreign policy, but since
both those possibilities are outside
the remit of a tennis championship
we can only celebrate Federer's gift
for humiliating the baseline bullies
who wouldn't come to the net
to volley if it were made of £50
notes.
For this is the beauty of Federer
stepping over the fallen gladiator
Sampras. He has thrived in an era
when tournaments are often won
in the gym, through graphite, graft
and grunting, not from the wafting
elegance that Federer brings both
to the court and the locker room.
Woods is a finely calibrated athlete,
all balance, smoothness and suspension,
but even he couldn't
match the oiled agility of Federer
as his body imperceptibly organises
itself to play the next shot.
Tracy Austin wrote in her newspaper
column yesterday: "Andre
Agassi said it best. When he was
asked to compare Federer and
Sampras, he said: 'There's
nowhere to go when you play
Roger.' To me that was his way of
telling us who he thought was the
better player. With Sampras at
least you could target the backhand
— but Federer has no weaknesses.
He can serve and volley. He
can stay back. He can crush you
with both forehand and backhand.
And he moves so well."
Apparently Sampras has predicted
that Federer will win "17 or
18 major titles" — three or four
more than his own record haul of
14.
When he really needs to, to
embellish his legacy, Federer will
surely find some formula to tame
the French Open's red clay and so
capture the only major prize that
still eludes him.
It may sound frivolous in
the present climate, but the agespanning
ease and refinement of
the world's best player is the best
antidote you're going to find to the
suspicion that this year's tournament
belongs on a spike of soggy
non-events.
If you think it dull that
a player of such transcendent
talent keeps winning here, you're
just not watching properly.
Wimbledon, the institution, is
mainly an expensive flower show
and lunch opportunity for the
aspiring classes, after all. As long as
Roger Federer's in it, though, it's
worth any number of bag searches
and drenchings.
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