Federer no comparison to Pacquiao
EXACTLY 140 years after the Wimbledon blastoff in 1877, Roger Federer has added a new chapter in the storied tale of the event. In winning it again Sunday last, Federer became the first male to emerge Wimbledon champion for the eighth time.
Even Federer could not believe it.
“I was just trying to play Wimbledon again,” he said. “Wimbledon has always been my favorite tournament.”
How he did it again is of fairy tale stuff.
What drove him to go for this surreal-like dream of eight unprecedented Wimbledon titles defies conventions.
It is more than a jarring journey for Federer to sporting immortality.
In winning again, Federer took only one hour and 41 minutes in destroying Croatia’s Marlin Cilic 6-3, 6-1, 6-4 in this year’s finals.
And Cilic is no pushover, having reached the championship match by beating some of the tournament’s biggest seeds.
In 2014, Cilic ousted Federer in the semifinals en route to winning the US Open.
With his straight-set victory over Cilic, Federer became the first to win Wimbledon without dropping a set since Bjorn Borg in 1978.
It came after Federer won his first Wimbledon in 2003—when he was barely 22 years old.
Now pushing 36, Federer’s eight-title feat was triggered by an astonishing five-year winning streak in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
He won again in 2009 and after nailing his seventh crown in 2012, Federer’s career seemed on the downswing.
He bounced back somewhat, advancing—but losing—in both the Wimbledon finals to Novak Djokovic in 2014 and 2015.
Then last year, Federer, hobbling and puffing, exited in the Wimbledon semifinals.
Reluctantly, he left the game after that to help his surgically repaired left knee heal the rest of the year.
Miraculously, he was back in January and won
the Australian Open.
He skipped the French Open in June, only to resurrect himself en route to rewriting Wimbledon history this year.
With his feat, Federer, the sweet-swinging Swiss, has made himself co-equal in precision, accuracy and regal elegance with Switzerland’s equally world-renown commodity: Rolex.
And so, unlike the 38-year-old Manny Pacquiao, Federer, even at 36, has a right to continue strutting his wares on the world stage— even if he already has an all-time best of 19 Grand Slams?