I AM JUST AN OVER-ACHIEVER
Roger Federer in modest mood but he would love to be Wimbledon champion just one more time
Swiss ace in modest mood as he prepares for another Wimbledon adventure
THERE is an effortless elegance about the old Weissenhof Tennis Club. Perched on a verdant hillside above Stuttgart, bordered by vineyards and the neat, modern houses of the quiet suburb of Killiesberg, it felt like the perfect place for Roger Federer to put the ageless beauty of his game to the test again last week.
Federer was the big draw for the ATP’s Mercedes Cup event, of course, but after 10 weeks away from tennis, it was a relaxed tournament that seemed like the ideal location for him to try to turn back time once more and launch his preparations for an assault on a record eighth men’s singles title at Wimbledon next month.
On two of the three courts used by the tournament organisers, spectators watched from terraced grass ledges and when Federer practised on Monday and Tuesday, he played on Court 4, next to a beach volleyball court. When one harassed return from a playing partner went astray, it landed in the sand.
Federer looked regal in the couple of days before his first match, against Tommy Haas on Wednesday afternoon. It is not that he tries to look regal. Like everything else with the pristine Swiss, it just seems to come naturally. Federer did not walk around Weissenhof. He sauntered around it. As if it were his turf.
On Tuesday, he toyed with a series of practice partners like a prize fighter knocking out suckers in sparring. He played four or five games against the world No 179 Yasutaka Uchiyama, and fans on Centre Court, watching Haas’s opening-round match, migrated to the side of the stand so they could gaze down on Federer, instead.
It was worth it. It is always worth it with Federer. When one of Uchiyama’s volleys wrong-footed him, Federer played the ball from behind his back. It drifted over his opponent’s head, leaving him stranded at the net, and bounced just inside the baseline. It was met with a collective gasp of wonder from the crowd that had formed by the side of the practice courts.
Federer was enjoying himself. He has been basking in a new type of public adoration since he beat his old adversary Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final in January to win his first Grand Slam for nearly five years. We had begun to consign our affection for Federer to the sepia land of nostalgia and now, suddenly, here he was conquering the world again in high definition.
Another Wimbledon victory would lift him above William Renshaw and Pete Sampras, the only men to have matched his seven singles victories at the All England Club, and take him to 19 Grand Slam titles, four more than Nadal, who won the French Open last weekend. More than with any other active sportsman bar, perhaps, Lionel Messi, watching Federer carries the keen realisation you are in the presence of a legend.
Between them, Federer and Nadal are threatening to turn the men’s game into the seniors’ tour. Just when the young men of the sport thought it was safe to think the two greatest players ever to have played were in decline, the kings from across the water returned to reclaim their crowns.
Federer, who will be 36 in August, has said that coming back from 3-1 down in the fifth set to beat Nadal in Melbourne was a highlight of his career. ‘It was maybe the best 20 minutes of my life on the tennis court,’ he told ESPN
Magazine. Now he wants a repeat at Wimbledon.
He sacrificed the entirety of the clay-court season to get himself in the best shape possible for the All England Club. When he arrived in Stuttgart, he had not played a competitive match since April 2, when he won the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title in Miami. Instead of expending energy on clay, his least favourite surface, Federer has been practising on hard, fast grass courts. He has even been using Wimbledon balls. He knows he does not have that many shots left at winning more Grand Slams and claiming one more Wimbledon has become his dream.
When he arrived in Stuttgart last Sunday, he exuded contentment. He said he was enjoying being able to ration his tournament tennis. He said it meant that when he got on the court, he was raring to go.
He had spent some time in Seattle during his period off, in the company of Bill Gates, dining together at Gates’s estate and talking about their philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent billions on improving living standards in Africa and the nascent Roger Federer Foundation is targeting similar areas, particularly children’s education.
GATES, a long-time Federer fan, has a keen appreciation of his genius. ‘You’re making impossible things actually look fairly easy because you’ve done so much behind the scenes to understand it,’ he said of Federer’s talent during their time in Seattle.
The meeting between the two men was another indication of Federer’s widening interests and his acceptance he has to prepare himself for a life beyond tennis. The merchandise tent at the Weissenhof club was well stocked with his foundation’s clothing range. Not that Federer is ready to move on just yet. When he walked on to Centre Court at Weissenhof, he got a thunderous ovation from the capacity crowd. Two bright green remotecontrolled camera cars scurried along beside him as he strolled to his chair. Sometimes, even machines become his courtiers.
Federer began as if he were going to wipe Haas, who is one of his best friends on the tour, off the court. He played the first set as if it were an exhibition, effortless and free.
One flashing backhand down the line hurtled past his German opponent on the baseline before he could move, one stop-volley on the run was the epitome of grace, one drop shot from the baseline, hit with slice on his forehand from the backhand court, was delicacy itself. He
killed his friend with kindness in the opening set. Some of his second serves hung so heavily in the air with the amount of top spin he put on them that it sometimes seemed as if they had stopped to take in the scenery before they dipped down on to the grass and kicked away ferociously. Some of his shotmaking took the breath away but that is standard for Federer.
In one corner of the stand, a couple of fans held up a sign that read ‘Magic Roger’. He breezed through that first set in 22 minutes. It was so easy, it was almost embarrassing. ‘I was cruising,’ he said later. It felt like he was sending out a message: Wimbledon, watch out.
But then, against all expectations, the match changed and the narrative about the timelessness of Federer changed with it. A break down in the second set, Haas broke back. Federer grew erratic. Now and again, he allowed himself a sigh of disappointment. He started making unforced errors. Haas gained confidence. Haas saved a match point in the tie-break and won the set.
Haas, remember, is 39 years old. He is ranked 302 in the world. Federer has taken 10 weeks off. Haas has pretty much taken three years off, hobbled by injuries. He was an old man playing in baking heat and yet now, as the third set unfolded, he gained the upper hand.
He broke Federer early and Federer could not respond. He stopped chasing Haas winners, he watched powerlessly as Haas drop shots left him marooned at the back of the court. To the astonishment even of the German crowd, Haas closed out the match 2-6, 7-6, 6-4.
The post-match analysis did not make pleasant reading for the Greatest of All Time. It was the first occasion Federer had lost an opening match on grass since 2002. Haas, who became one of only three men — the others are Novak Djokovic and Lleyton Hewitt — to have beaten him twice on his favourite surface, was the lowest-ranked player to hand him a defeat for 18 years.
In the aftermath of the defeat, it felt as if Father Time was trying its luck with Federer again. He has waved it away now and again when it has come calling for him in the past and dismissed its beckonings but now it had laid down another challenge. When, one after another, Haas and Federer came to speak to the media following the match, the atmosphere was laden with the wistfulness that comes when sportsmen in the autumn of their careers muse about what time they have left.
‘There are some moments when you can play more free,’ Haas said, ‘but there are some moments where nerves play more of a role than they did in the past, which is hard to believe, I’m sure.’
As Haas sat on the dais, he said how happy he was that his six-yearold daughter, Valentina, had been able to come to the match. The inference was clear: there would not be that many more opportunities for her to see him play. When he had finished talking, Valentina skipped up to the stage and wrapped her arms around his neck. Federer arrived soon afterwards. He was philosophical about his defeat. ‘It was decided on a serve here and a return there,’ he said. ‘At the end, you have to acknowledge that he was a bit better. I wasn’t as sharp as I was hoping to be. I made some crucial mistakes and some judgment errors.’
He said at least his early exit would give him more time to prepare for the Gerry Weber tournament in Halle this week, his traditional pre-Wimbledon warm-up.
‘Me as a positive thinker, that’s what I see,’ he said. ‘It’s good to play a match again. My body already feels different.’
HE SMILED as he told the press he had seen Valentina cheering her dad on wildly during the match. ‘Maybe I’ll take two of my kids to Halle,’ he said. ‘And then four to Wimbledon. That should give me an advantage.’
It did not feel like a particularly apposite time but I asked Federer how important it was to him to be remembered as the best ever to have played the game of tennis when the time finally comes for him to retire.
In the wake of Nadal’s triumph at Roland Garros, some of the Spaniard’s supporters have once again been arguing that he deserves that title and that his superior headto-head record against Federer balances the fact that Federer has won more Grand Slams.
It is an argument that no one can ever win, a bit like the debate about whether Messi is better than Cristiano Ronaldo. If you favour Messi, the guess is you tend to favour Federer, too. If you favour the athleticism of Ronaldo, then maybe you prefer the muscular brutality of Nadal. It is a battle between aesthetes and athletes.
‘If I win every tournament from here going forward for the next 10 years, I might be considered the best ever, yes,’ Federer said, ‘but otherwise there will still be the debate because I didn’t do things when I was 15 years old or I didn’t do things in the middle.
‘I can only do as well as I can. At the end, I am very happy with my career.
‘I totally over-achieved on everything, so to be quite honest it’s not that important to be considered the best ever. I can only do the best I can.’
And so now to Halle. And then to the All England Club, his home from home.
As Federer left Stuttgart, some were already saying that his defeat against Haas and his early exit had dealt his Wimbledon hopes a fatal blow.
But this is Roger Federer. This is a man for whom the usual rules do not apply. Time has tried to whisk him away from us before and he has slipped its embrace. Now he must do it again.