LONDON JULY 6: It’s midnight and I sit in the empty Wimbledon arena. A silence descends. Long ago roars have fled — absent and gone. A classic battle behind them — 15,000 fans, stunned and drained — have abandoned this hallowed cauldron. In solitude, my thoughts should be of but a single soul, a Texas gentleman, Austin’s Andy Roddick.
I should be reflecting on America’s first Grand Slam champion in six arid years. My mind should be replaying that indelible scene: Roddick’s cherished Wimbledon moment of triumph, his lunging, full-extension match point backhand volley, that ecstatic expression of disbelief and his poignant scramble up to the Friends Box to embrace his beaming bride.
But while fantasy comforts, history is all too cruel and more than unforgiving. For, as a man from this island — Winston Churchill — once said, it is the victors who write history. The vanquished must stand aside to absorb their pain, such a bitter fate.
So — as the London night wind bites cool, a single paper rustles free and the humbled grass (once so bright, so green, so promising) at last rests easy — I should be marveling at the triumph of a bold American alchemy. I should be celebrating how our leading player — transformed by romance and love and the synergy of working with a knowing coach, reappeared on stage with a retooled spirit, surprising calm and even an adept little half volley.
But history — that merciless mistress — tells me otherwise. Dejected, infused with despair, our tearful Andy was but relegated to the shadows. A Wimbledon triumph, once within his grasp, now seems but a mean tease. Instead, my mind once again envisions a Swiss man of grace, who so often has risen above the storm to triumph in every imaginable way.
Poet and performer, icon and master — this man’s greatest asset is that most powerful of tonics – belief. After all, he has won on every stage, every surface, in every circumstance and over the very best his generation could muster.
Ten hours earlier, the questions were clear. Not only could Roger again gain the No.1 ranking, but prove he indeed was the best of all generations by claiming the game’s greatest mark — 15 Grand Slam titles. God and man seemed to want to know, for, as the BBC informed us, “A win today would see him soar to the summit. People want to be here. It’s Federer’s date with destiny.”
Gone are all the digressions of the fortnight: last year’s (how can you top this) “Greatest of All-Time” final, the absence of an injured Rafa now resting on a Spanish island, the faded frenzy of Murray mania, ladies Venus and Serena again doing their Williams thing, and a piece of inspired architecture, the $160 million roof that now lays quiet, rather a pricey spectator.
For today is the men’s final and no one sets a stage with more retro panache than Wimbledon: the deep-blue sky, the clouds high, civil bonnets, shrimp and mayonnaise sandwiches, an obligatory band — stiff yet wonderful, pasty pale ball boys, sailors, bobbies and Honorary Stewards and that most proper of all murmurs in sports that sounds from a knowing crowd, judgmental yet-oh-so civil.
A clinging tension prevails as a great throng gathers. The dour comic devoid of smiles (Woody Allen), the faithful wife full with child (Mirka Vavrinec Federer), innocent school girls in from Oxfordshire, English nobles down from their castles and a dazzling cluster of tennis royalty — Laver, Borg, even Pete.
All the while, on court, the most exalted noble of them all, Roger Federer, did not disappoint — he rarely does. Brazen yet balletic, flowing and feather-free — he spanked his forehands, sliced backhands, served huge and moved like a dream. Why — more than any other soul — does this man make our maddening game seem like such a breeze?
But beware: Federer’s foe this day was not some old standard V-8, that gas guzzling “Hot Rod” we know too well: clunky and plodding, mechanical and artless. Yes, we dearly love Andy Roddick: his heroics known, his power astounding, his fighting grit and year-after-brutal-year consistency unquestioned. But, truth be told, he was a tad challenging to watch. A slow moving man of thunder, boom ‘n blast, impetuous, out of sorts at net and perpetually hampered by that (where’s the flow/connect-the-dots) backhand.
But, miracle of miracles, like Connors, Sampras and Agassi before him, A-Rod had crafted a revival. Working with his savvy coach, Larry Stefanki, inspired by his young love Brooklyn Decker, the once plodding blaster had shed his tight end pounds and gained confidence, morphing into a trim, surprisingly fleet, imposing athlete with an array of freshly minted weapons: eye-popping backhand, flatter forehand, in-your-face returns, instinctive half-volleys, better than ever problem-solving, semi-Zen calm: such a stealth transformation.
So to the shock of all, Roddick gave just as good as he got. At 5-5 in the first set (some 23 minutes after the late-arriving Sampras entered to scene stealing applause) Andy calmly weathered a fierce Federer storm. Unblinking and still, he bravely survived four break points, unleashed a torrent of groundstroke winners, blasted one Roddickian serve after another as he captured the first set 7-5 and, amazingly, sprinted to a 6-2 lead in the second-set tiebreak. On the brink of dominating tennis’ ultimate dominator, surely A-Rod, the power broker and master of the tiebreak (he’d won 26 of 30 this year entering the final) would prevail on one of his four set points to claim a presumably insurmountable two set lead.
But, Fed braced. His fire lit: a backhand flick to the open court and two winning serves erased three set points. But on the fourth, Roddick had pinned his foe. Off-balance and on the run, Roger could only toss up a looping, slightly mishit floater. Roddick would certainly pound yet another pedestrian volley.
But this has been a season of pivotal shots of devastating effect. A fierce inside-out forehand enabled Roger to grasp victory from defeat against a stunned Tommy Haas in Paris. About to down Serena and reach the Wimbledon finals, Elena Dementieva only had to flick her match point down the line — her favorite shot. Instead, in a fateful instant, she hit right at the surprised, but more-than-pleased Serena.
Now A-Rod only had to gently guide Fed’s floater to an inviting, wide-open court. His eyes bulged, his cheeks swelled, but inexplicably his not-that-tricky high backhand volley fled wide — way wide. “We’re human. We’re not Cyborgs,” Roddick would later explain sensibly enough. Still, what a deluge. In three minutes of pain, Roddick’s fortunes sank.
An on-court Houdini, Federer (like Sampras before him) has a penchant to grab opportunity by the jugular. Collecting six straight points, he won the breaker 8-6 and entered one of those zones — the Federer Zone. Blasting wide open the slightest of openings, winning all but one of his first serves, he pocketed the third set tiebreak with a 126 mph serve to the corner.
Now, the man who was playing for history had the winds of fate at his back. But prairie tough, American proud — Roddick is nothing if not a fierce battler who time and again has wryly navigated harrowing gauntlets. Schooled at the sport’s most demanding arenas and by a character-building collection of away Davis Cup ties where vein-popping zealots hollered in hopes of seeing the imperial Yankee grovel, Roddick tapped his unbending will to break Federer to force a decisive fifth set, that of course just had to be.
After all, if the Swiss fellow from the land of mountains wanted to claim the greatest record in our sport, surely he would have to do it in our most sublime setting (where he collected his greatest early triumphs) and he would have to climb the steepest of slopes.
So Fed and A-Rod, two master swordsman, probed and thrust. Calling on all their ample arsenals, sprinting corner to corner – the battle raged, intense, unabated: a 143-mph serve from Andy, a whopping 50 aces and punishing forehands from Fed. The staccato points, lightning quick. The games, brief yet fierce: explosive sprints within a draining marathon that blended into a mush of sameness, a power march remarkably void of break points until flash, a combo of three quick Roddick jabs — zap, blast, thwock — gave him two break points at eight all. But Fed — that man of abiding belief, served lights out to again dodge disaster.
Then as the marathon raced on, some recalled Roddick’s Aussie Open classic, where he downed Moroccan Younes El Aynaoui (21-19 in the fifth) or Wimbledon’s iconic long-distance race, Pancho Gonzalez’s 112-game, 5:12 win over Charlie Pasarell. But the greatest matches of all time must all boast their own distinctive signature. Don Budge vs. Baron Von Cramm was fought in ‘37 amidst gathering clouds of war. Brat John McEnroe vs. Tennis God Bjorn Borg had its fourth set, gut-wrenching 18-16 tiebreak. And just last year’s Rafa-Roger instant classic swept into the dusk. Now could this season’s classic du jour — with its longest final set in Open tennis history be clustered with tennis’ best ever? Here as tennis’ anointed trio of legends (impassive Laver, silver-haired Borg and L.A. hip Sampras) looked on, power tennis rocked the cathedral. Hammer blows and nasty angles, the service winners rained down. Who would prevail? Who could tell? Who will blink, for the slightest miscue will coax catastrophe. And so the games raced on, mano y mano. As a potpourri of shadows crept across the tattered court, each man held serve with impressive conviction. (The virtually unbreakable A-Rod held 37 straight times.)
But then, finally, a discernable pattern took hold. Roddick’s forehands began to drift to the alleys, his serve faltered. His backhands greeted the net. Just slightly, the weary American wavered. Three times Fed crawled within two points of history, until in the 30th game of the fifth set, at long last, Andy shanked a forehand which allowed the game’s Commander-In-Chief to joyously leap into history, having won the 95 minute last set and the 4:16 5-7, 7-6(6), 7-6(5), 3-6, 16-14 match.
The trio of legends on hand was quick to pour forth the accolades.
Conventional wisdom concurred — here was the best player of all time. The statisticians announced a bucket-full of Slam records (most games in a final — 77; longest final set — 30 games; Roger’s seventh consecutive Wimbledon final) while analysts pondered why he’s dominated.
“He’s a player apart, like Michael Jordan and Tiger — who does everything,” John McEnroe told IT. “He’s a once-in-a-century athlete,” suggested Justin Gimelstob. Then Mark Woodforde offered a disarmingly simple theory — that Fed just refuses to lose. “Roger habitually got used to winning those matches with the exception of when there is one Majorcan on the other end,” said the former Aussie dubs star.
“There was almost a hint of stubbornness there at the end of the match. Roger was unwilling to budge away from the baseline. There was serve after serve coming down, but he was determined not to move or change because I guess he bet on himself. He thinks if there is a mishit or a bad bounce, it will, in the end, go his way. Stubbornness and self-belief are traits in all champions and it comes from winning over and over again, especially at the Slams.”
One player who has not won over and over again at the Slams is Andy (he’s 1-34 in Slams and 2-19 against Fed). And on this day, all the Texan was left with was dust and memory. His backers offered a torrent of consolation. Many noted, with sufficient evidence, that he outplayed Fed, adding that Andy was a class act, showed so much heart and has much to build on and be proud of.
His Davis Cup Captain Pat McEnroe — drained and disappointed — sighed, “Oh, man, Andy’s done more for himself with this loss, more than all of the other wins he’s had in his life put together.”
Roddick’s coach, Larry Stefanki, added wistfully, “His day will come.”
Still the history book still told us a simple fact: Andy sadly remains a one-Slam wonder. So all those rockin‘ Roddickians were left shaking their heads, knowing they could only mourn and ask that plaintive question: ‘What if?’ For on this day, in this celebrated arena, less than six hours ago history was once again written by that prevailing man of grace — Roger Federer.
