Saturday 13 July 2019

Roger Federer is too old to be doing this!

Briefly, and from nowhere, Roger Federer appeared to remember how old he was. Thirty-seven, for God’s sake. And the father of twins. Two sets of twins, come to think of it. He was certainly too old to be doing this. And here. And against him, too. Oh, he felt tired. What did he think he was playing at? 

 And momentarily, the spirit sagged and the limbs creaked and the old man looked on the point of surrender. From two break points up, he handed over 20 of 23 points as Rafa Nadal closed out the second set 6-1. This, many thought, was the end. Federer had won the first set on a tiebreak but here was age and the challenge of a younger, fitter man catching up with him in real time and on Centre Court.


Yet we’ve seen this film before. Nadal was supposed to have dispatched Federer to the margins here in 2008. Wasn’t true then, isn’t true now. From somewhere, again in the ether, a fresh energy inspired him, the years tumbled away and Federer played arguably the greatest, most focused tennis of his twilight years. If these indeed are twilight years. 


Maybe in a dank attic in an abandoned Gothic pile in the Swiss Alps there is a portrait of Federer aging horribly. Maybe a deal has been struck with some diabolic entity and there will be a price to pay. The supernatural certainly offers a more plausible explanation than the rational here.

Tennis players approaching 38 should not blow Nadal off court. Nadal is one of the greatest athletes the sport has known. Some of his power shots draw gasps from the crowd. The miracle that is the television camera cannot hope to do justice to the spin he places on a ball. And his movement around the court; at one time he took his shoes off and skin fell like gruesome, repulsive snow.

This is a man who gives everything to win a match. And, somehow, Federer gave more.

Forget tennis, this was one of the greatest individual performances in the history of sport. Tiger Woods’ comeback at the US Masters this year was astonishing, but golf is not as physically demanding, or as brutally gladiatorial as the tennis court. In what proved to be the final game of the match, Nadal visibly raised his level of aggression as he fought to remain. Returns were hit harder, his reactions to points won more screamingly intense.





MailOnline

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