‘FAIRY TALE’ FINISH
TENNIS STAR ROGER FEDERER, AT AGE 35, BECAME THE OLDEST MALE TO WIN AT WIMBLEDON IN THE OPEN ERA, CAPTURING AN UNPRECEDENTED EIGHTH TITLE SUNDAY.
Wimbledon ended in a muddle.
Roger Federer surfed another crest in a staggering career. Lamentably, he did so while his giant opponent reeled with one of the lousiest little things in all of human life: a foot blister.
Federer, who won Wimbledon at 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 30, won it again Sunday at 35, further cramming his name into a men’s tennis record book where it appears almost as rampantly as it would in a biography. Lamentably, it came with a 6- 3, 6-1, 6- 4 match that quickly deflated and then careened until Marin Cilic got to a changeover in the second set and sobbed.
Federer snared a male- record eighth Wimbledon singles title, became the oldest Wimbledon champion of the Open Era, became the oldest Grand Slam champion since Ken Rosewall in 1972 and said, “My heroes walked the grounds here and walked the courts here.”
Cilic came off two recent Grand Slam matches with Federer in which Cilic was the better player all told and wound up saying he wept over a “feeling that I knew that I cannot give my best on the court, that I cannot give my best game and my best tennis, especially at this stage of my career, at such a big match.”
Federer corralled a record 19th Grand Slam title ( ahead of the 15 for second- place Rafael Nadal), took a second Grand Slam this season and arranged for an arrival in New York in late August with a stunning yet realistic chance at 20, which would have seemed farfetched only six months ago. Yet did so with a muted response to his 114-mph ace up the middle on match point, for the outcome long since had congealed.
What confusion. Even Centre Court stopped its customary worrying for Federer and began to try to bolster the helpless Cilic, a novelty given that it joins the world’s many arenas that tilt so unapologetically toward Federer that he seems to have a bushel of nationalities and given how it verged on obnoxious last year in helping Federer rebound from two sets and three match points down to edge Cilic. So sparse had Cilic’s bursts of excellence become through the match that at times a 2014 U. S. Open champion ranked No. 6 in the world looked challenged even to get a ball in play.
“I want to thank the physios here,” Cilic said with his reputed grace, calling them by first names. “They helped. The last 30 hours, they were just constantly almost with me. They did as much as they could, but unfortunately I still feel the pain.”
But then, it fit that this Wimbledon would go out limping, for it had staged a two- week limp fest, especially on the male end. It became an epitome of the hardness of the game upon the human frame in the late 2010s. Seven players retired in firstround matches, one in the second round, one in the third, one in the quarter- finals. Two giants, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, looked hurt enough that their potential U. S. Open participation already lurks in question.
Yet atop the bale of bandages stood a 35- year- old global star 12 months after he, too, left Wimbledon steeped in uncertainty and shut down the rest of his 2016 season. Yet in a dreamscape he called a “fairy tale,” he won the 2017 Australian Open and now combed through Wimbledon in a minimum 19 sets (with a retirement mixed in). A marvel who won Wimbledon 14 long years ago as a 21- year- old in a ponytail over which he winces nowadays could speak from an impossible summit.
“Winning eight is not something you can ever aim for, in my opinion,” he said. “If you do, I don’t know, you must have so much talent and parents and the coaches that push you from the age of three on, who think you’re like a project. I was not that kid. I was really just a normal guy growing up in Basel, ( Switzerland), hoping to make a career on the tennis tour. I guess I dreamt, I believed and really hoped that I could actually maybe really do it.”
“I truly believed, you know?” Federer said. “For me it was also important that my team believed it as well ... Maybe when you’re doubting yourself, they reassure you. I did ask them the question sincerely, to everybody on my team, if they thought I could win majors again or if I could win the biggest tournaments or if I would win against the best on a regular basis. Basically, the answer was always the same from them: that they thought if you’re 100 per cent healthy and you’re well-prepared, you’re eager to play, anything’s possible ... That’s how it played out, so they were all right.”
WINNING EIGHT IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN EVER AIM FOR, IN MY OPINION.