The Hindu : Sport : Roger Federer ready for an encore

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Roger Federer ready for an encore

Nirmal Shekar

The Swiss maestro is gunning for his 13th Grand Slam crown

— Photo: AP

FEELING FINE: Roger Federer has overcome a stomach virus and is all keyed up to defend his Australian Open title.

Melbourne: By this time next year, Mt. Federer could be the tallest new peak in men’s tennis, an awe-inspiring Everest that future generations of champions will have to measure their greatness against. Herein lies the significance of the year 2008 vis-a-vis the game’s history as we head into the first Grand Slam championship of the season.

Around this time five years ago, few might have dared believe that someone would set out to conquer Mt. Sampras and come within a few steps of doing so in such quick time. Herein lies the greatness of Roger Federer, winner of 12 Grand Slam titles in five years and well on his way to becoming the most successful male champion of all times.

If the Swiss maestro, who skipped the AAMI Classic invitation event here this week because of a stomach virus, can re-enact his 2007 feat — when Federer won three of the year’s four Grand Slam titles — in the new year, by early September, Pete Sampras’s career record (14 Grand Slam titles) will have suffered the fate of most sports records, the good and the great.

Sport exaggerates the passage of time. Eras pass, so do icons.

The great Bjorn Borg era now seems like the last Ice Age. Yet, few might have imagined on the eve of the 2003 Australian Open — when Federer was yet to open his Grand Slam account — that Sampras’s hard-won record was likely to fall in 2008.

But then, great achievements offer us the grand illusion of permanence. As this writer watched Sampras — tears of joy streaking down the champion’s cheeks — lift his seventh Wimbledon trophy in the gloaming on a July Sunday in the year 2000, it was possible to believe that the man who had just passed Roy Emerson’s long-standing record of 12 titles was unlikely to see his own mark conquered in his lifetime.

Even a lifetime spent in following and reporting sport does not immunise you from such romantic illusions.

That’s the best — and sometimes the worst — part of sport, the fact that it allows you to retain the child in you well into battle-hardened adulthood.

Changing times

Indeed, in sport, to paraphrase the great Bob Dylan, “the times they are a-changin” all the time. For, the ephemeral quality of human ingenuity is nowhere as clearly underlined as in sport.

Then again, if you believe that the sine qua non of sport is not the end result but the process used by an athlete to get there, then it is easy to also believe that few men, if any, in the game’s history might have played quite as aesthetically agreeable a brand of tennis as does Federer. And it is because of this — and not his career record — that he will leave an indelible mark on the game by the time he quits.

For all that, the record is unlikely to be offered on a platter to Federer. The last few steps to the summit and beyond are always the toughest, however gifted, focussed and accomplished a champion might be. The great Swiss is still only 26 and has many fruitful years ahead of him. But it is at this point that, quite often, the big questions are asked and will have to be answered.

It is here — with the icy peaks in sight — that the mind will come into play more significantly than ever before.

The maestro’s genius may have fooled some into believing that winning a bunch of Grand Slam titles is a stroll in the park. It would be a folly to imagine that it was as simple as that. Winning a single major is tough enough, a feat that eluded a few very good players, including our own Ramanathan Krishnan. But winning 10 or more is just short of the impossible, a monumental achievement that only a half dozen men — Sampras (14), Federer and Emerson (12), Rod Laver and Borg (11) and Bill Tilden (10) — have managed to pull off.

Since he won the first of his three Australian titles here four years ago, Federer has been beaten only once in a non-clay court Grand Slam event.

That rare feat belongs to Marat Safin, who claimed a heart-stopping five-set semifinal victory over the great man in the 2005 event.

Such a record is bound to intimidate opponents. And if Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Co. were hoping that the stomach virus would have taken enough out of the champion for him to turn into something less formidable than his normal superman self, then Federer made it clear today that they would have no such good fortune.

“I am happy with my form. Physically I am fine now. No more issues,” said the champion.

More open

As good as Justine Henin is — she won two of the three majors in which she played last year — it must be admitted that her chief rivals will go into the court with greater confidence against her compared to Federer’s adversaries.

And with both the Williams sisters — defending champion Serena and Venus — in good form, the women’s event certainly looks a lot more open.

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