This article is written by a certain breed of person who has no business writing about such things: a spectator. I want to hear what Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt, and even, yes, John McEnroe. They know what Federer can and cannot do, and the others who challenge him.
By the way, I am writing this in August, 2009, and Federer has just won the French and Wimbeldon back to back, setting the record for the most men's singles grand slams.
Hey Mr. Spectator, just do what you do, sit back and watch. Maybe Federer will win, maybe he won't, but your opinion as someone as someone who has never been "there", shouldn't be posted on the internet.
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The Federer Fade
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Apollonian is the way I think of these artist-athletes. In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysius are the sons of Zeus, with Apollo the god of the sun, lightness, music, poetry. Apollo typically represents wholeness and civilization, as opposed to Dionysius, who represents individualism and primal nature. In style and manner, Federer is the pure type of the Apollonian, while his great adversary, Rafael Nadal, is Dionysian. Or, if one prefers to come down from Olympus, Federer is Athens, Nadal is Sparta.
And, of late, Sparta has been beating the hell out of Athens. True, Federer appeared in three Grand Slam finals in 2008, and won one of them (the U.S. Open), which for any other player would be a glorious year. He is still capable of supplying what the late novelist David Foster Wallace, a Federer admirer, called Federer Moments: "These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you're OK." But recently Federer Moments seem fewer. He has not won a Masters ATP tournament in the past two years. Ordinary human mistakes in his game are now more common. The number of his unforced errors sometimes exceed those of his opponents. Something strange is happening.
Neither age nor injury appears to be Federer's problem. Throughout his career, he has never had to "retire" from a match owing to injury or exhaustion. Nor does his having had so much success—having grown complacent on victory and spiritually fat on money—seem likely. His recent marriage to his longtime lady-friend and manager seems unlikely to have had much to do with his downward slide.
Might it be that Roger Federer, having attained perfection, has nowhere to go but down? Can anyone concentrate on one thing—in this case, year after year being the last one to return a small fuzzy ball within the lines of a tennis court—for as long as he has? His confidence is on the run; his aura of invincibility, shattered. Upstarts, sensing the weakness of the grand lion who once led the pride, are closing in. In a recent match against Novak Djokovic, the even-tempered Federer, in a moment of angry frustration, smashed his own racquet against the ground.
Perfection in sports, or any other realm, for that matter, has been given to few, and even then it is never an outright gift but more on the order of a temporary loan. Athletes may hold it on the briefest terms of all. Although I hope that I am completely wrong, and that Roger Federer comes roaring back to win many more Grand Slams, my ineluctable sense is that, for this great athlete whose skill has given me so much pleasure, the loan is due and payback time, sadly, is at hand.
Epstein is the author, most recently, of “Fred Astaire” (Yale University Press).
© 2009
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