Tick! Tick! Tick! The loudest soun
d in tennis these days is not a cluster of Serbian fans screaming from the upper tier or the grunts of Victoria Azarenka. Rather, it’s the sound of the inexorable, slow-moving clock winding down on the incomparable career of Roger Federer.
Make no mistake about it — the Swiss magician is still one of the best players in the game who almost always gets to the business end of important tournaments. His performance at the year-end Barclays Championships in London, where he tore through Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Robin Soderling, was one of the most impressive weeklong runs in memory. He still goes into every tournament — even on slow clay — as one of the favorites. He could again win Wimbledon this season or for many seasons to come. And, yes, conventional wisdom tells us he’s the greatest player ever.
But these days, Federer — aka The Mighty Fed — is, well, somewhat less than mighty. He’s still an agonizing week short of Pete Sampras’ record of 286 weeks at No. 1, and his ranking is a distinctly non-Federerian No. 3. The phrase “say it ain’t so” somehow comes to mind.
As the lines on his maturing face are deepening, his groundies seem to have lost a bit of their penetration. His forehand — once such an awesome, unwavering dagger — now flares too often. His backhand, while still eloquent, occasionally reveals itself as a vulnerable (dare we say old-fashioned?) stroke in comparison to the two-handed power blasts of Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, et al. And, sadly, the shimmer of Roger’s once-sublime movement is beginning to fade just slightly. Fred Astaire never stumbled. Mikhail Baryshnikov never teetered. Why does our once-so-jolly Roger seem a half-step slower? Why does he flub one half-volley then another? Where have all the flowers gone?
Not only does Roger have challenges with his strokes, movement and balance, his mindset now seems different, slightly askew. One asks, “Where’s his imposing swagger — his once seamless ability to dictate and his ability to make all those mid-course decisions that turned around so many a battle?” Watching Federer – his doubt apparent — can jar the senses. As his great rival, Rafa, ferociously raised his game en route to a not-that-close 6-3, 6-2 win in the Miami semis, the great Swiss champ blinked, his decline evident, his 38 unforced errors an unkind stat.
Of course, at the core of the problem is the stratospheric standard Roger set — a record 16 majors, reaching the semis of 23 straight majors, those 285 weeks perched at No. 1. And then there was his art. The tennis player they compared to Da Vinci, the man they said could not avoid beauty, gave us the game with an effortless grace and power no other champion — not even Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Lew Hoad or Pete Sampras — could match. Year after year, the man played God on a sporting rectangle. And so it is all the more painful that we watch as the myth becomes more mundane.
Now the star who has overcome so much — the tragic death of his formative coach Peter Carter, the inability to win a major early in his career, a debilitating bout with mono and Nadal’s punishing forehand — is facing his greatest trial: the specter of his own professional mortality. Not surprisingly, coming to grips with his limits hasn’t been easy. No one ever accused Fed of having a shortage of self-confidence. Lack of pride is hardly one of his flaws. You could hardly expect The Mighty One — who has long been surrounded by a loving family and adept handlers and enablers – to candidly suggest: Okay, I’m aging. I can’t impose like I once did. I don’t intimidate as much coming out of the locker room. This is tough. I’ve doubts. The future is murky.
Even empires find it hard to grasp, let alone implement, exit strategies. Why should super athletes, whose entire identity is rooted in the skewed beliefs of the battlefield, do any better? Rare is the great champion who is not hard-wired to deny their vulnerability and the power of their opponents. Just ask Michael Chang.
Still, Roger gives us occasional hints of reality. After some probing, he admitted that he hit more freely when he was young since emerging players feel like they are “the king of the world” and swing freely on break points. But more often we get a certain peeved ‘tude: a quiet storm of denial, a simmering anger. Roger tells us that he feels better now at 29 than he did at 22; that he is playing well; that he is close to winning and played just fine in Australia, where Djokovic dismissed him. The man who built his career by having a laser focus on Slams (but now hasn’t won one in 15 months) now contends, “It’s unfair to just judge me on only Grand Slams or judge me only on other tournaments. You have to look at the big picture; otherwise why play 20 tournaments per year?…Sometimes Slams get overrated; sometimes other tournaments do. It’s all a question how you look at it.”
When, after losing in Miami, he was asked about his future, he retorted that the “bigger hassle is being asked all the time these questions. I don’t know how many times I need to answer until I just say I’m not going to answer it anymore. Up to you how many times I will have to answer the question until I’m sick and tired of it. But I know that I can do many more things in the game… I’m very excited by what’s to come still. I don’t feel like I’m 35 like you guys make me sound. I’m still only 29, and I have many more years left…I’m happy with my game.”
But Roger wasn’t happy with Martina Navratilova when she said he was “on the other side of the float. I don’t think he’ll ever play as well as he did three or four years ago. That’s not to say he can’t still win a Slam, but it’s difficult to see him climbing back to No. 1.”
Fed swiped back at Martina and the media. “Maybe,” he contended, “she missed the London World Tour Finals. Maybe she was somewhere else climbing Kilimanjaro. Look, I love Martina. She’s been an inspiration to my wife, and I always love seeing her, but sometimes if you have the microphone in front of you and you get a negative question, you get dragged into it. And she’s in front of the microphone a lot of times. Eventually, you can’t just say only good things.”
As tennis once debated the value of Federer’s lofty achievements, now it assesses his end game. Some note that many elders have won Slams when they were 29 or older (Navratilova 5, Agassi 4, Connors 3, Sampras 1). Federer’s coach, Paul Anacone, insists his man is eager and hungry and Sampras says friend Federer is a far more fresh 29-year-old than he ever was. But others claim that Federer is going through the motions and wonder whether he at last has lost his inner fire.
So tennis now asks whether the man who has given us a thousand shots of wonder and has gave us a bounty of wins, will give us another reason to applaud as he finishes strong with a flurry of wins — whether it be at Wimbledon, in New York or Melbourne or at the 2012 Olympics — before he too, eventually, stands convicted by that most unforgiving of all juries — time.
