He hit and he missed; he hit and he missed — sometimes by a fraction of an inch, sometimes by several inches and sometimes by what seemed miles. A man who made a sporting epoch out of hitting shots that would find the lines on a tennis court like heat seeking missiles — often from impossible angles, seemingly defying gravity — was living through a nightmare, along with his tens of millions of fans.
Was it Roger Federer out there on Thursday night at Melbourne Park; or did a look-alike wannabe tennis pro sneak in there to take the maestro's place?
We have wrestled with that question in the past, haven't we? Several variations of that question, in fact.
“For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
In their recurrence with recurrent changes,
A certain seeming order; where this ranges
We cannot count things real; such is memory's might.”
Substitute dream's fraternal twin — nightmare — in those imperishable lines of T. S. Eliot from The Waste Land , and there you have the recurring theme of a great sportsman in decline.
For the first time in eight years, for the first time since he won his maiden Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in July 2003 with a masterful display of flawless serve-and-volley tennis — a style that he was to later replace with an apparently more risk-averse alternative with great success — Federer has been left without a single major title.
Of course, the Swiss genius has 16 in his showcase, which is two more than anybody who ever unsheathed a tennis racquet, but for the first time in eight years there may be a question mark over whether he needs to find any more room in his cabinet for Grand Slam silverware.
This column is seldom used to keying in premature obits of all-time-great sportspersons, but there may be intimations from Federer's struggle against Novak Djokovic that this is the sort of slump that could potentially be terminal.
Finitude is a pre-condition of sporting excellence; all things good and great have to come to an end. The feeling that even the great Federer cannot try and overcome that which few, if any, have overcome — athletic mortality — gained ground on Thursday night.
More than the mis-hit backhands and the errant forehands, more than even the split-second he has lost in speed when it comes to court coverage, it was Federer's body language that was a giveaway — his drooping shoulders suggested that here was a great player who was resigned to his fate.
“[S]port can serve a kind of liturgical function. It becomes a parable: those few athletes who are gifted with a certain magic become proof of the splendours that the body can achieve — feats of grace, strength, speed, skill, stamina. But the athlete's half-life is so short; his decline and failure become a model of mortality in everyone.”
Those unforgettable lines, memorised 33 years ago by a college student who now writes this column, were authored by Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow in February 1978 after the peerless Muhammad Ali had lost to Leon Spinks in a heavyweight world title match in Las Vegas.
And those immortal words crossed my mind after Federer's loss at Melbourne Park. Of course, Ali came back to reclaim the world heavyweight championship for a record third time, and only those who do not know what the Swiss conjurer is capable of would bet against Federer achieving a miracle of that sort.
For mere mortals, decline is a fact of life. But with great sportspersons, we often tend to — mistakenly — believe that they are not subject to physical laws. This is precisely why greatness comes with a price — you have to repeatedly prove that you are not one of the “others.”
Predictably, Federer raged against the fading of the light at the post-match press conference when someone suggested that it may be the end of an era.
“Yeah, I mean, they say that very quickly. Let's talk in six months again,” he said.
After hiring Pete Sampras's former coach, Paul Annacone, Federer has gone back to the playing style he started out with, attacking relentlessly and backing himself to move forward on the big points. It is something that ageing tennis players resort to when their legs stop performing magic.
Maybe in six months' time, in a place that he owned for so long — the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon — Federer might prove many of us wrong. Maybe not.
But this much is sure: Federer at his best was an incandescently beautiful sight, his playing peak a state that has been almost unattainable by all but a handful in the history of the sport.
