Thoughts on a Beautiful Wimbledon

by Chris Marshall:

I’m an unabashed Roger Federer die-hard. I’ve never made any efforts to hide that fact. But it’s been a hard couple of years for Fed Fans. Since winning the 2010 Australian Open, he’s appeared in only one Grand Slam final, when he was handily beaten by Rafael Nadal in Paris last year. Once he turned 30, it was easy to believe he’d never win another major.

Although I was never totally convinced, I fell into that pattern of thinking more and more often over the past few months. Every time he would do something really promising, something else would happen to make me question whether or not he still had it. Just a couple of weeks ago, he lost to Tommy Haas in the final of Halle. Yes, he lost on grass to the 34-year-old Haas, who needed a wild card just to get into the Wimbledon main draw.

That was a bad sign, but Federer has a way of making me start to believe again. Wishful thinking most of the time, but he’s won so much in the past that it doesn’t take much to get my hopes up. Then he fell down two sets to Julien Benneteau in the 3^rd round, and I was absolutely convinced he was done. Kaput. It not only would have knocked him out of Wimbledon. It would have ruined his streak of seven million (estimated) consecutive quarterfinals reached.

He came back, though. Somehow. Sure, Federer has a history of miraculous escapes, but coming so soon after Nadal’s shocking loss to Lukas Rosol, I genuinely felt like his run was over. Rosol elevated his game to a point where nobody on Earth could have beaten him. Benneteau came crashing back to the ground.

Then he dropped a set to Xavier Malisse and called a trainer onto the court for the first time in over three years. His back was tightening up. He was fine, and luckily for my psychological well-being, I was driving to Smithville when all this was going down. I would have been a mess. Again, Roger won the match, and then he cruised through his quarterfinal against Mikhail Youzhny, setting up a semifinal against Djokovic.

I don't know why I chose photos of both of them screaming.

I had no illusions about this match, even though the statistics demonstrated a slight edge for Roger. The record will show that Federer has a lifetime winning record against the Djoker and has a better career grass court record than Novak. Then there was the (essentially meaningless) fact that Djokovic had never successfully defended a title and had never played Roger on grass. I wasn’t fooled by these things, and neither were the oddsmakers. For the first time in his career, Federer was the betting underdog at Wimbledon.

Roger won in four sets, but I never truly accepted his impending victory until match point was over. The last two U.S. Open semifinals against Djokovic have made me too skittish. Match points don’t mean anything if you can never win them.

Waiting on the other side was Andy Murray, the enigmatic Scotsman who had sneakily accrued a career winning record against Federer. But that was counterbalanced by Murray’s 0-3 mark against Federer in majors, as well as his 0-9 career record in sets played in Grand Slam finals. Murray was in a unique position, though, as the first Briton in 74 years to reach the Wimbledon final. Would he be crippled by the pressure or elevated by it?

If anything, it turned out to be the latter. Still, Federer was able to gut out the victory, which is evidenced by my ability to write this post. If Federer had lost, I’d be looking for a sufficiently high bridge to fling myself off of. I watch any and every sport I can, but only the Steelers and Roger Federer have the ability to inspire thoughts of self-harm. It almost makes me sad that I’ve never been able to truly appreciate his genius because I’m too emotionally disheveled when I watch him play. Most of my comments today were along the lines of “Federer is a terrible tennis player” and “I’ll be happy if Roger wins a single point the rest of the match.”

These are crazy thoughts, obviously, but sanity has never been one of my defining characteristics when I watch him play. I’m a Federer Kool-Aid Drinker, to use Peter Bodo’s phrase, and I feel no shame about this. At the same time, I felt really bad for Andy Murray, who clearly wanted the win so bad. He’s by no means the first to play a terrific match only to be felled by Federer, but you have to wonder how many more chances he’ll have.

Next year there won’t be a Lukas Rosol waiting to knock off Nadal in the second round. Murray will have to do that dirty job himself, and it’s a task that he hasn’t been well suited to in the past. And it’s impossible to tell how much he will be affected by today’s loss. The last Great British Hope, Tim Henman, never even made it to the final, so it’s hard to draw historical parallels between the two. There’s always the chance Andy will be inspired by his high level of play, but on the other hand, he might be so crushed that it weighs on his mind for years to come.

Federer, sadly, is advancing in years, so Murray won’t have to deal with him forever. His most pressing problem is being the same age as Nadal and Djokovic. He can’t simply wait for them to go away. He has to be able to elevate his game to a point where he can consistently defeat one or both of them. Maybe one of them will lose early again next year, but that’s no mindset to have in a major.

Part of me hopes he’ll pull it off at some point. Because if not Murray, then who else will it be? It seems like such a lucky break that he came along so soon after Henman. Every year, the Lawn Tennis Association trots out British hopefuls as wild cards, and each time they only serve as sacrificial lambs for the top guys from other countries.

I just really like this facial expression.

On the other hand, the past two decades have seen the rise of the two most dominant grass court players in tennis history. 14 out of the last 21 men’s singles titles have been won either by Pete Sampras or Roger Federer. In a future environment, that level of dominance might not exist, opening the doors for players who are not even Murray’s caliber.

There are so many questions, all of them impossible to answer right now. My personal belief is that all the what-ifs are too much of a risk. The best hope, if Britain wants a Wimbledon singles title in the near future, and they certainly do, is for Andy Murray to find a way through.  He has the talent, and he has the desire. The trick is putting them together, along with the certain amount of luck that beating the Big Three requires.

As for Federer? Well, I’m sure he’d love to add a singles gold medal to his resumé, and a U.S. Open title, though doubtful, is not out of the possibility. Because the Olympic tournament will be held at Wimbledon, on the grass courts he loves so much, this represents his best, and probably final, chance to bring it home. While he did bring home gold in doubles with his fellow Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka, the lack of singles gold must eat at him. In the past two Olympics, he has lost to a (very young) Tomas Berdych and James Blake, both of which were huge surprises. He’ll have to make sure he doesn’t meet a similar fate this year.

It’s always bittersweet when Wimbledon is over, but it does mark the beginning of the U.S. Open series, which is about two months straight of big hard court tournaments. The Olympics will throw a wrench in the works, but it will mean even more tennis than usual. It’s an exciting time to be a tennis fan.