The Hindu : Sport : Fighting Federer makes it five in a row

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Monday, Jul 09, 2007
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Sport

Fighting Federer makes it five in a row

Nirmal Shekar

Spirited Nadal pushes the champion all the way

The Swiss emulated Swede Bjorn Borg who won from 1976 to 1980
Federer’s 11th major title draws him level with Borg and Rod Laver

— Photo: AP

POWER & GRACE: Roger Federer equalled Swedish legend Bjorn Borg’s feat of winning five successive singles titles in The Championships at Wimbledon on Sunday. The top-seeded Swiss, in an epic final lasting three hours and 45 minutes, defeated Spain’s Rafael Nadal, seeded second, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6, 2-6, 6-2.

London: Greatness in sport is almost always achieved in tiny increments — each little pebble consuming gallons of sweat, demanding loads of skill, and drawing from deep reserves of willpower and physical energy.

But, then, the latest instalment accruing to the account of one Mr. Roger Federer seems more like a huge Alpine rock rather than a pebble.

Shortly before 6 p.m. on a glorious Sunday afternoon on the centre court at Wimbledon, the magisterial wizard of lawn tennis pulled alongside one of the game’s legends — Bjorn Borg — and did so in front of the great Swede.

Long battle

Federer’s 7-6(7), 4-6, 7-6(3), 2-6, 6-2 victory in three hours and 45 minutes over Rafael Nadal of Spain in the men’s singles final of the 121st championships gave him his fifth straight Wimbledon title, equalling Borg’s 1980 feat — one of the most incredible records in modern sport.

It was the Swiss maestro’s 11th major title and he also drew level with Borg and Rod Laver in the list of all-time Grand Slam title leaders. Only Roy Emerson (12) and Pete Sampras (14) are ahead of him now.

The best of sportsmen spend a lifetime searching for greatness, courting it passionately season after season. But, with Federer, you tend to believe that it is greatness itself that is wooing him single-mindedly, hiding behind the silverware to finally embrace the master at every major stop.

Next in line is Sampras’s modern day record of seven titles. After that well, who knows how high Federer will raise the bar by the time he’s done.

The Swiss maestro appeared down and out after the fourth set but he dug deep early in the fifth to fight off four breakpoints, two each in the third and fifth games before putting on a burst of speed on the gallop home, taking the match on his second championship point with a stylish overhead.

‘Lucky one’

“To play a champion like Rafa and to equal Borg means a lot to me,” said Federer, his eyes still moist. “`It was such a close match I told Rafa at the net that he deserved it as well. I was the lucky one.”

Few Wimbledon finals have got off to the kind of start that this one did. Nadal seemed a touch nervous early on and the champion was the more composed of the two. Yet, once Nadal roared back from 3-0 down to make it 3-3 using his machismo as a statement, the quality of tennis reached stratospheric levels.

The next six games, leading to the inevitable tiebreak, saw the two men go at each other like gunslingers in a ‘Wild West’ movie, eyeball to eyeball, giving nothing away. It was a slugfest meant to galvanise the spirit, a passage of play featuring supersonic ground-strokes on a sun splashed court.

Hawkeye factor

Neither man won more than a point on his opponent’s serve in any of those six games but the tiebreak, despite a spot of drama starring the centre court newcomer — Hawkeye — saw a distinct drop in quality. Both men wanted it so badly that they seemed to have lost the freedom that saw them exploring the limits of their own skills as performers earlier in the set.

Nadal fell behind 3-6 with a pair of nervous groundstroke errors, one on the backhand and the other on the forehand, but then staved off two set-points on serve and the third with Hawkeye’s help. He challenged a call on a backhand up the line and then went on to take the replayed point (6-6). But a backhand error from the Spaniard gave the champion an opening and he closed out the set with a stylish backhand crosscourt volley.

It was remarkable how quickly Nadal left behind the disappointment of that tiebreak to draw level within the next three quarters of an hour.

Fighting back

Like a slightly wounded gladiator suitably working up his anger and charging at the opponent, the three-time French champion fought back to give himself a chance in the sixth game of the second set. But what does Federer, down 40-15 on serve, do? What would you expect? The great man hits three straight aces and in the blink of an eye the door is once again shut on Nadal.

Then again, Nadal is not a man who wilts easily in any psychological battle of one-upmanship. He hit a marvellous winner from a hopeless position after sliding on his bottoms to the turf in the 10th game on Federer’s serve and went on to pocket the set with a superb backhand pass.

At this point there was very little separating the players although you got the feeling that the momentum was swinging ever-so-slightly Nadal’s way. But it was Federer who once again came out on top in the tiebreak.

Strangely enough, instead of driving home the advantage, Federer lost his way in the fourth set as Nadal raced to a 4-0 lead. The champion surprisingly lost his cool as he argued with the chair umpire about Hawkeye’s accuracy. “This system is killing me,” bemoaned Federer.

The truth was, all the blows were being dealt by Senor Nadal. Hawkeye was guilt-free. But, then, how Federer soaked up those sledgehammer blows and came back in the fifth set to keep his appointment with Borg was the true mark of his greatness.

SCOREBOARD

Prefix denotes seeding

Men’s singles: Final: 1-Roger Federer (Sui) bt 2-Rafael Nadal (Esp) 7-6(7), 4-6, 7-6(3), 2-6, 6-2.