Having recently rescued a copy of The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson’s acclaimed account of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893) from the publishers clearinghouse that is my bedside table, I can’t help but wonder why it took more than a century f
or someone to vividly document such a pivotal moment in American history. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of intriguing characters.
When it comes to tennis, the characters don’t get much more compelling than Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, whose ever-amplifying rivalry is taking the sport to new heights. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait decades for an account of their All England Club epic of last summer, which (all due respect to Mssrs. Borg and McEnroe) in most minds has now usurped the ‘80 Wimbledon final as the reigning GMOAT (Greatest Match Of All Time). And who better to pen the play-by-play of record than SI wordsmith Jon Wertheim? Whether he’s spending a week on the road with the Harlem Globetrotters or providing us with insightful, behind-the-scenes takes at the U.S. Open, Wertheim possesses the rare ability to pull readers in and make them feel as if they’ve just scored a ringside/rinkside/courtside seat.
In Strokes of Genius, Wertheim revisits Nadal’s five-set, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-7(8), 9-7 triumph in shot-by-shot detail, all the while taking us into the locker room, into the Friends’ Box and into the minds of the Nos. 1-2 players in the world. “This match had it all,” Wertheim writes. “Skill, courage, self-sufficiency, sportsmanship, grace, discipline, gallantry, poise, intelligence, injury, recovery, fibrillations of momentum, even acts of God. The match was also significant for what it lacked. Melodrama, pornographic trash talk, cheating. There was neither a scoreboard telling fans when to clap nor a public address announcer with a cartoonishly baritone voice. No cheerleaders, no goofy mascots, no booing, no piped in music during breaks in play or unnaturally peppy men firing T-shirts into the crowd via air cannon.”
Two hundred eighty-eight minutes into the match, Nadal hit an unremarkable backhand that Federer, in turn, dumped into the net. The Mallorcan fell on his back in exhaustion, barely able to raise his fists in celebration. He had just defeated Federer Almighty, who had finally been dethroned after winning five straight Wimbledon titles. As Wertheim puts it: “This was the great John L. Sullivan losing to Gentleman Jim Corbett, Y.A. Tittle kneeling in the mud of the football field, blood streaming down his face.”
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STROKES OF GENIUS: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played
By L. Jon Wertheim, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 208 pages, $24
