Roger Federer wasn't supposed to be there. In the wake of this maddening but beautiful loss, remember that. Federer will say he expected to be there again, but he had to know the chatter. Of course he did. Federer may live a gilded life, but he is human.
He surely was aware of that prolonged stretch of pessimism about his chances to win—or even reach the final—of a tennis Grand Slam. Any Slam. The chirping began when the losses in major tournaments began to pile up. There were a few to Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Tomas Berdych, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
But the list also included Sergiy Stakhovsky, who beat Federer at Wimbledon last year. Tommy Robredo. Ernests Gulbis. Federer in the final weekend used to be a sure thing, and he had not made a Slam final since he beat Andy Murray at the All-England Club in 2012. He had earned 17 majors, more than anyone else, but his car was considered parked, tall grass reeding through the wheels.
The car is still parked, technically. But on Sunday Federer offered a charge of the old greatness that tennis presumed had slipped into the rear view. The record will show Federer lost in five sets to Novak Djokovic, 6-7 (7), 6-4, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-4. But the three hour, 56 minute match was also a thrill and a message. Federer will turn 33 next month, and he still has something left in the tank.
It was all there on Centre Court, in glorious bursts: Federer's electric first serve and nimble ground strokes; the lightness of baseline movement (effortless-looking, but hardly effortless) that appears to make him glide. Maybe it wasn't pure vintage Federer, but it appeared to be the basement tapes.
This was the Federer the Federer faithful had been hoping for, perhaps quixotically, during those vulnerable stretches in which his game appeared to be slipping, and worse, looked outmoded.
Perspective is critical here: Federer is the No. 3-ranked tennis player in the world. The lowest he dropped to amid that nadir was eighth. But his re-ascension wasn't assumed. Age was assumed. So was decline. All around him, tennis was evolving, getting younger. There was a new wave. The Legend had been rendered to an opponent.
But at this tournament he's won seven times, Roger was Roger again—surging, crisp, and visibly confident with that bigger-headed racket, and a note from coach Stefan Edberg to push toward the net and apply pressure.
Mentally, Federer looked reconnected. There had been wins at smaller tournaments, and a run to the semifinals in January in Australia, and he'd had some fortune on his side of the Wimbledon bracket, with Nadal pushed out in the fourth round.
But there was an edge to his game now, and it showed itself in the quarterfinal against Swiss countryman Stanislas Wawrinka, and in his short work of Milos Raonic in the semis. Versus Djokovic, Federer saved a fourth-set match point to push it to a fifth set. (That fourth set was a perfect microcosm of Federer's late career: politely declared done, his end coming soon, and then, suddenly…)
Let's be sure to give Djokovic his due. This is his seventh Slam title, his first at Wimbledon since 2011, and a statement of its own. Djokovic had suffered three losses in a row at Slam finals—he'd lost five out of the last six Slam finals he'd been in—and as usual, Djokovic was athletic and rangy, with a wicked first-serve and shot-making recoveries that bordered on comical.
But he won this match with his head. It would have been easy to unravel after that fourth set floated away—and you could sense those flutters in his pained look toward his stern-faced coach, Boris Becker—but Djokovic refocused. When he needed to be a closer, he was a closer. He dedicated the win to his late childhood coach, Jelena Genčić, and cutely thanked Federer for "letting me win."
For Federer, this run defied a familiar arc. The pattern of a great athlete is well known: There is the early incandescence, which establishes potential for greatness. Then there is (hopefully) the actual greatness, which establishes stardom. Federer had experienced as good a run as anyone. After that comes the aging and the inevitable crumble. It happens to all. It can get hard to watch.
Sometimes, however, there is a reversal, a return of the brilliant everything. There's no assurance it will last, but when it surfaces it is both nostalgic and riveting and anything but hard to watch. There will be another tennis epitaph for Federer, but the prior ones have been written in haste. When this Wimbledon was over, Roger Federer said he would see everyone next year. It sounded more like a promise than a wish.
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