Beauty and the Beast
July 7th 2008 10:05
Beauty and the Beast
To merely say that yesterday's Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was epic would be to grossly understate the quality of tennis and also to severely underplay the quality and intensity of drama on show for the best part of 5 hours. For a tennis connoissieur the action could have been described as mouth watering - except for the fact that the action on court left your hearts throbbing and mouth dry. The racquet work on display was so sublime as to evoke in supporters of either player an admiration - untinged by any grudge for the other man. Today Federer supporters would have had no choice but to admire and applaud Nadal's intensity, strength, verve, tenacity and quickness of body and mind. And of course, the countless Rafa supporters had no choice but to marvel at the defending champion's breadth and depth of skill, the way how he had answers to every contortionist question that Rafa put to him, the way he was always unflappable - whether he was serving out a gamepoint or had to defend a championship point, how he manages to remain graceful as ever - even when fighting for his very life and of course for the sheer tennis skill and imagination of the Swiss champion. This writer is smitten by the cricket bug and rarely misses cricket action for anything else - given a choice. But there is no confusion in my mind when I call this final between Federer and Nadall, the single greatest event of sporting action that I have had the pleasure of witnessing - bar none. The India-Sri Lanka final going on at the same time had no chance of getting my attention - save the rain breaks that interrupted the tennis match on a couple of occasions. Such was the intensity, ferocity and consummate skill on show in this tennis match.
Call me a traditionalist or a person stuck in a time warp - but the only things that seemed to mar the action on court were the numerous line calls that were challenged by both the players. A whole lot of line decisions were proved wrong when challenged through Hawk-Eye but it somehow did not feel right to this writer when a TV challenge found the outermost edge of the line. It evokes the question - how accurate is Hawk-Eye in reality? Is it accurate down to millimetres and centimetres. Because those were the margins by which some of the line calls were decided.
OK, lets go from millimetres and centimetres on the baselines to degrees of beauty. It must be understood that when categorizing Federer as the Beauty and Nadal as the Beast we are not talking about their visage or their bodily attributes. By that yardstick, both are handsome. Federer in the classical, laidback, gentlemanly way with his dimples, pimples and innocent smiles and Nadal in the visceral, muscular, dark way with his rippling muscles, locks of hair and dusky Spanish complexion. No - we are talking about their tennis here. Federer's is the one that defines the coaching manual itself. His footwork is precise, even measured. His backswing, execution and follow through are all minor works of art. No matter the point, no matter the pressure, he keeps doing it, he is as close to perfection as a tennis player would get and is therefore easy and even dazzling to the eye. Nadal on the other hand has built his own technique. He has customized his footwork, his grip on the racquet and his followthrough to match his strokes. His ferocious forehand ripping top spinners and his amazingly directed backhand shovels, slices and pummels. He is not classical and nor does he look to be very efficient. But is he effective or what? Not just Federer, but hundreds watching on court and millions watching the world over would give testimony on this count. Nadal is, if nothing else, very effective. In many ways, if one were to draw a biblical note to this contest, Rafael Nadal is the consummate Devil to Roger Federer's shining Angel. Of course with all aspects of good and evil taken out of the equation! They are opposites who are so evenly matched - an antithesis to each other, almost.
It was very interesting to note the spread of support in the Centre Court yesterday. It was almost overwhelmingly in favour of Nadal. I have this small theory on this phenomenon. Federer is on that peak that few can imagine or visualize, let alone dare to climb. Nadal on the other hand is somebody you readily identify with. He was not born with the gift of the game. He worked hard for it, he laboured on his game, built it painstakingly from ground up. And one can see it in the way he wins his points. It is not with mesmerizing, magical winners most of the time. It is by wearing the other man down. He is the easier man to identify with. Though by no means a commoner, he does happen to be an easier object to identify with than the icy cool and terrifyingly talented Federer. Maybe that is why almost all of Centre Court chanted 'Rafa', 'Rafa' as the game wound on to its bewitching and thoroughly befiiting end.
As for the tennis action itself, if there was a single biggest improvement in Nadal's game, then it has to be his serve. I had not seen him in Queens but from what was seen of his serve in the last French Open, there was a lot of room for improvement. His first serve was not among the fastest or among the most well directed. Nadal tended to serve to the opponent rather than away from him most of the time. Well, this aspect has been improved upon - tremendously. Not only does his first serve now have more meat to it, it is also well directed and dependable on the big points - a champion's mark, if ever there was one. He still serves more towards the opponent than away from him but with one improvement. His body serves bouncing right upto the opponents' chest or throat are well nigh impossible to handle and are more frequent. His second serve too has acquired that little bit of a kick which makes it difficult for players to line up and throw everything behind the ball for an outright winner. As if this was not enough, Nadal had married consistency with skill in his serve. His first serve percentage in the final - over 5 gruelling sets - was a staggering 73%. This was in contrast to Federer's decent 66%. But Nadal needed this and more to best Federer yesterday.
The first two sets saw the Champion play a poor and loose service game on two occasions. On both occasions, Nadal took the gift without much fuss. At two sets down (6-4, 6-4) the writing seemed to be on the wall for the champion. To make no secret of it, this writer - a staunch Federer supporter - did not see much light at the end of the tunnel. But great champions and especially ones who are spoken of as the greatest ever in the game are made of better stuff than that. It was no secret that the Nadal serve yesterday was impenetrable. It betrayed no nerves, no frayed ends and no trouble with direction or placement or pace yesterday. That Nadal did not let his service game be broken more than once by the champion over 5 sets lasting close to 5 hours is testimony to his skill and to his strength of will. But as simple a problem as an inability to break the opponent's serve (more than on that solitary occasion in the 3rd set) does not stop champions in their track. Federer simply ensured that none of his service games were broken in the third set. And in the tiebreaker - like all great champions - he showed he had that extra gear when serving. In total, the defending champion fired in 25 Aces in the final. A few gems were unleashed in that third set tie break too. And the relentless pressure he was putting on Nadal seemed to work. He got that critical mini-break and made good on it - serving the set out, taking the tie-breaker at 7-5. Nadal did not seem surprised. In fact he looked as if he expected this. His set of jaw and tightening of expression indeed showed the determination to wrest the trophy as it did the respect he had for his esteemed opponent. After a rain break, we saw what was arguably the best tennis this year and maybe of a few decades, in the 4th set. While Nadal is not one to be rallied with for fun, it has to be said that Federer is not the worst back court player himself. To watch these players scramble from sideline to sideline while still being able to time the ball and put in spin or slice on it apart from directing it away from the other player was a mindblowing experience of another order altogether. This is why sport is termed transcendental. Silly things such as taking sides, rooting for one player over another simply fell away. These were replaced with one single element. Awe - deep and ever-growing - at both the players skills, of course. But also at the remarkable hunger that was shown by the two people. Even the most diehard of Federer's supporters had to put their hands together when Nadal managed to drill those passes with inches to spare inspite of being wrong footed and when on full stretch. Likewise, there would not have been many Rafa supporters who did not find it in their innermost hearts to praise the champions' lack of nerves and his outstanding amount of God given skills when he pulled out pass after pass, volley after volley and serve after serve when put under the most severe of tests by Nadal.
But perhaps this is where the whole story lay. It was Nadal who was posing the questions all the time. Federer did well, he did fantastically well. But basically he was responding to the challenges thrown by the Spaniard. The Matador from Spain may be famous for his defensive game. But he was anything but defensive on the Centre Court yesterday. He threw down the gauntlet repeatedly for Federer. Federer scrambled, stormed and dazzled - but all of it was in answer to those ever-present questions from Nadal. He just could not recover enough to pose his own questions. And this perhaps was the secret of Nadal's emergence over Federer. To stop Federer from demolishing him on court and banishing him from his presence is a difficult thing - as all those who suffered in the earlier rounds would tell you. But Nadal was not everybody else. Not only did he stop Federer from attacking him, he reduced the champion to defending against his pushes, punches, shovels and drives - time and time again. Even the most die-heard of Federer fans must have felt that Nadal deserved to win. He was simply playing tennis in another level. It was tennis induced by hunger. A ravenous hunger to get his hands on the crown that he hankered after the most.
But Federer did not get to where he did by simply succumbing when the going got tough. Nadal might be playing fantastic tennis and almost the whole crowd on Centre Court might be behind him and he himself may not have been having the best of times with the Hawk Eye system. Perhaps remembering Federer's not-so-kind words against it a season back, Hawk Eye steadfastly resolved to not give Federer the benefit of doubt! Close line decisions, when appealed against, almost always seemed to go the way of Nadal. A weaker man might have submitted. He may have acknowledged that great although he was, this was not his day. But Federer, as some people say is not merely great. He is the greatest. And so an extra gear was found. That gear to which very few mortals have access to. The 4th set of this finals saw one of the most uncompromising bouts of tennis that was ever on display. Federer used his inside out forehands for all their worth, pushing Nadal into using his backhands one handed or trying to shovel the ball back to Federer's backhand when off balance. Time and again, Federer attacked Nadal's backhand corner and then whipped out winners with his precision-honed forehand. There were even a few balls that Nadal could not run and get to! There was a small phase when Federer was actually outplaying Nadal from the back of court. But it was only a phase. And Federer recognized it. For he judiciously mixed his back court game with glides to the net to finish off points before they could get tiresome. Some of the volleys that Federer used in finishing off points may have been made without much fuss, but orchestrating it required a skill of completely another dimension. This was shown when Nadal ventured into the net once or twice. But for all his brilliance, Federer's game has always been marred with the stigma of unforced errors. His mishits off his forehand are fast becoming commonplace. So, it should be no surprise that while Federer had the higher number of winners, he also led the way with his unforced errors - 52 of them as compared to 27 from the uncompromising Nadal.
The 4th set was eventually taken to a tiebreak where Nadal did manage that crucial mini-break and was at one point 5-2 serving - with an opportunity to finish the contest. Federer stormed back from there. He got two mini-breaks. And after that, he saved a championship point with what has to be one of the strongest shots ever under pressure in recent tennis history - a backhand down the line whipping pass to a perfect approach shot from Nadal who was hunkering at the net for the finish. It proved to be a decisive swing of momentum and Federer eventually wrapped up the 4th set - again at 7-6 with the tiebreaker wrapped up at 10-8. As Vijay Amritraj rightly noted from the Star commentary box, there was a definite tightening in Nadal when the opporunity was there to serve out the match. He knew he had relinquished the opportunity and the momentum had probably swung the other way. But it would be remiss if one does not mention the unabashedly Nadal-worshipping Alan Wilkins and his single point agenda to see Nadal win Wimbledon yesterday! At 2 sets all, 2 games all and deuce, it appeared there was little to choose between Amritraj and Wilkins as rain once again poured down from the heavens cooling off the tremendous heat generated by the contest. A short while later play resumed and Federer finished out his game with two mighty serves. But as strong as Federer was in his own service games (apart from indiscretions he would dearly have loved to avoid in the first 2 sets) it has to be said that he could not find a way to convert too many of the 13 break points that he had on Nadal's serve. He was only able to cash in on one of those break points. In contrast Nadal picked up 4 from 13 opportunities. In many ways, this statistic tells its own story. But it is far from telling the complete story - as is the case with statistics normally. The 5th set had no tiebreak and it went on serve till 7-7. However Federer tripped up when serving to go up 8-7. The signs were there to see when he got down to 0-30 and from then on Nadal was like a hound on the scent of blood. He ran like there was no tomorrow, he returned as if his object of monumental hate was the fuzzy yellow sphere served up by Federer and he threaded passes past Federer as if shooting holes past almost impenetrable enemy defenses. Federer was broken - in serve as in spirit - in the 15th game of the final set. New balls were called for and Nadal duly finished proceedings to wrest control of the Wimbledon trophy from Federer who had held and kissed it for 5 times previously - and continuously. In a fitting gesture, Nadal bit into the trophy as he does on those French Open trophies. While he may be Spanish, the traditional English bulldog qualities that this man shows are there for the world to see. To break Nadal's bite on the cup next year and wrest it from him, one feels would need tennis of an even higher order than what was seen yesterday. Especially since Nadal is still a kid at 22 years of age! Is that possible? Only time will tell.
This was not a fairytale and so did not have a fairytale ending. Beauty did not win and the Beast did not fall. It was the Beast that got the Beauty. But then, was there not a telling statement on this regard by a wise man? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder! The Beast too is beautiful - in its own way. And while only one can hold the trophy, both were winners as far as sport is concerned. And this is the verdict of a spectator who has never in life experienced such amounts of vicarious pleasure in watching sport than yesterday when Nadal met with Federer and set Wimbledon ablaze. Forget the 5 hours taken by this match. This was a match to be remembered for a lifetime and across generations. It was, in every way, a victory for tennis. And it showed sport as the transcendental pursuit that it is, from time to time!
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