Federer cool as heat hell fries mortals
The Australian Open should be shifted to March before a player dies in the Melbourne furnace.
The Australian Open promises a magical final tonight between Roger Federer, the 360-year-old wizard, and his one-time conqueror Marin Cilic. And yet it is hard not feel just a teeny bit cheated by the stupidity of the organisers. It is hard not to point out how a quite wonderful tournament culminated in burnout.
Three of the eight quarterfinalists were ruined by injury. Rafa Nadal and Hyeon Chung were both pushed to retire from their matches. Kyle Edmund stuck it out until the end, but he was in no condition to be competitive. These are very fit men who broke down.
It was quite simply too darned hot in the early stages of the Australian Open. The tournament that likes to call itself ‘‘the Happy Slam’’ has acted more like the ‘‘Sappy Slam’’.
The officials’ stupid intransigence in making players like Gael Monfils and Novak Djokovic play in on court temperatures that reached 69 degrees has left half the field sapped. Monfils was not even granted a time extension between points when he pleaded for mercy because of dizziness and nausea.
In 1973 factory workers in North Canterbury walked off the job when temperatures rose to over 40 degrees. The tennis players should have done the same. Thousands of chickens perished on that day back in 1973, cooked before their time. The modern tennis players know how they feel.
Chung’s feet were red raw from blisters. Even pain-killing injections couldn’t numb the pain sufficiently. Nadal had an inflamed hip muscle, which his doctor partly attributed to the heat of his match against Diego Schwartzman.
Edmund’s younger body at least got to the semifinal before the radiator cracked. The Englishman played in 40-degree heat against Nikoloz Basilashvili, his shirt soaked with white salt crystals.
I am told that when Boris Becker somehow won the Australian Open in 1996, he vowed not to return, saying sooner or later someone would die in the heat. This year it was the tournament that died. It has to be moved to the last week in March or first in April, before the Masters golf in Augusta. Make it the Easter Slam. it will give the older top players the chance of a greater off-season break, and create more of a close narrative through the slams.
Early on this year, before the heat ravaged too many competitors, there were days of compelling story lines. Tennys Sandgren, the unlikely American who orders coffee in the name of Dave so he won’t get asked about his first name, departed with a magnificent rant against the media, who he not unreasonably accused of having pre-conceived ideas and demonising him. Here lies Tennys Sandgren, killed by Twitter.
But the American’s fifth-set victory over fifth seed Dominic Thiem was quite magnificent. Thiem just could not believe the shots that Tennys from Tennessee was still whacking down at him. The man who looked like he should be chugging beers in a sports bar was cheered on at the year’s first major by two blokes who looked like a truck driver and a mountain man.
Then there was Chung, the man who took up tennis because the green ball would improve his eyesight. We wondered if the first Korean to make a slam semi could do a Y E Yang, the man who conquered Tiger Woods, and take down Federer. It wasn’t to be, but the defeat of Novak Djokovic thrilled a continent and beyond.
Chung is 21 and Edmund is 23. Greg Rusedski said that Nick Kyrgios, who is the same age as Edmund, would have won a slam by now if he put it the same amount of work. It seems like decades since two young, unseeded men made it through to the last four of a slam. And tennis has been revitalised by it. How sad that they both burned out.
And I know that some will say that Federer made it through the heat at the age of 36. Ah, but he didn’t. Federer asked to play his matches in the evening and the wish was granted, even though the afternoon slot would have been much more agreeable to the big USA TV networks.
Federer did find the temperature a bit hot when they had to close the roof for his semifinal. So he asked for the air conditioning to be pumped up and lo, it was done. I am sorry, but this is not a level playing field.
But for now let’s celebrate the Fed and wonder how Cilic goes about beating him. How anyone goes about beating him. David Nalbandian, who beat Federer eight times, once observed that most players thought: ‘‘Aw shit, I’m playing Roger, I’m out.’’
He said: ‘‘Every time I get on the court, I believe I can beat him. Not enough guys think that way.’’ Tomas Berdych bore that out. He went 5-2 up in the first set against Federer and then his aggressively dominant tennis collapsed. It was pitiful. As Jack Nicklaus once said, when it came to the majors most players were beaten before they even started.
Since returning from injury at the start of 2017 Federer has lost just five matches. He has not even dropped a set in Melbourne this year. He seems unbeatable, but so do the All Blacks at times. Part of it is aura. And both Federer and the All Blacks play up their mystique.
Heck, the Fed even has a fitness coach called Paganini. Fair enough, the man is an artist, the most important player in Federer’s team. Maybe Kyrgios should give Paganini a call and ask for a few notes.
Yet Federer is far from untouchable. Cilic wiped him out in New York in 2014 in straight sets. When they next met at Wimbledon two years later, the Croat had match points in an epic contest. In fact the only match in the last five years when he hasn’t pushed Federer to the limit was in last year’s Wimbledon final when Cilic was injured.
The two have never met in Melbourne, but the Croat has to be aggressive. Cilic has to slow down Federer’s super fast service games. He has to take away his time on the baseline by hitting close to the lines and varying his length and pace and spin. Don’t let Federer get set or he will murder you. He has the number five on the back of his pink shoes to remind you how many Australian Opens he has won. The Fed has always been gaudy and gauche.
And great though he is, Federer has never been immune from pressure. He felt it early in his career when his contemporary, Lleyton Hewitt, was winning tournaments and he couldn’t get over the finish line. He felt it midcareer when Nadal came along and Federer wept here in Melbourne with the frustration of repeated defeats. And he felt it in the evening of his career, from 2012-16, when Federer couldn’t win another major.
‘‘I ran into Novak and Rafa. That blocked it for me for a while. I don’t want to say that I gave up hope but I was going to be happy if I won one more major before I retired.’’
Now his rivals are falling apart and Federer is going for his third major out of the last four in which he has competed. Federer has given the French away, he can’t beat Rafa on the red dust. Everything else is possible. It is the story of Federer’s magical career.