Roger, Rafa blowing our minds
COME Sunday, bloody Sunday, it will be a cruel Australian Open men’s final. The tennis gods have played a master stroke on us mere mortals by giving as a Grand Slam final with the greatest, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal.
New generation, who? It was Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov’s finest hour to date, and probably, because of yesterday’s Aussie Open semi-final epic, he will be all the better for it, for it was a defeat that was as close to victory as it could come. Few tennis lessons were as valuable as those offered by the Majorcan yesterday.
In guts and glory, in mental steel, in what it takes to be considered truly great.
It’s moments like these that make the Kyrgios chronicles seem inconsequential, unworthy of ever a second glance.
Tournament organisers would be forgiven if they decided to double ticket prices for Sunday’s men’s final. Sports connoisseurs did not dream that they would bear witness to this classic clash again … Dare we say, for the last time. Or would it be?
Sunday’s narrative is a gripping one of blood-and-toil resurgence, of the guts and glory known only to this rivalry of the ages. Defeat will be more acute … because they are the greats who returned to that classic dance of the Swiss maestro and the Spanish brute.
The artist who rediscovered his muse and silenced the colosseum with his tennis prose; a weary bull who defies the matador, a triumphant snort from the red mist. And the mob rises to its feet once more.
It’s a cruel joke and yet we wouldn’t have it any other way.
As Rocky Balboa said, “Keep hitting me, keep hitting me. I like it.”
The stakes? Federer would take his Grand Slam tally to 18. Nadal could become the third player to win each of the majors twice. The other two being Aussie gentry Rod Laver and Roy Emerson.
But it’s so much more than that.
Considering a possible final against each other this week, both players recalled a time a few months ago. There was even talk of an exhibition match. “I was on one leg, he had the wrist injury and we were playing some mini-tennis with some juniors. We said that was the best we could do now,” Federer said after beating Stan Wawrinka in the semi-final on Thursday.
It seems that greatness surprises even the greats themselves. Or maybe they had us all fooled. You can take your exhibition match and put where even Hawk-Eye can’t go. We want more! And they have duly delivered like the champions they are.
We beg for Tiger to stalk the fairways anew. Must we still be convinced? The eye of the Tiger that lost its glint. Perhaps we simply sense that his calibre deserves better.
The Williams sisters still demand that the world pays due attention.
They dare to tamper with Usain Bolt’s gold. But we know that his treasure chest is safely buried in Jamaica, marked X. His greatness is elusive to some, but rest assured, the pirates will tell you, it exists. He is proof. Ali’s magnificence transcends time; Queen, Pavarotti, Shakespeare, they linger on after the final refrain like gold dust in an afternoon’s sunbeam.
How we long for the good old days, nothing will be as grand as it was yesterday. But Roger and Rafa have shown in the first Grand Slam of the year that greatness never leaves; it defies the jaded imagination and blows our wildest dreams, time and again.
Olympus has declared that we may revel again.