Jun
8
Roger Federer: the greatest ever
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Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player ever. Fact. By winning the French Open he has rendered all debate on the matter meaningless.
For a while, it looked as though the greatest tennis player ever may not be rewarded in history. That there would always be a lingering question: ah, but he didn’t win the French, did he? Would the follicly plentiful Pete Sampras (who isn’t number 1 on Google – surely the definitive sign of an ‘old world’ champion) be statistically the best although never the most loved? By winning the French Open (on clay, the only title he hadn’t won where he had won 13 times in Australia, Wimbeldon and Flushing Meadon – for the uninitiated) Federer put the question to bed.
Very briefly, this time last year, Roger Federer was in serious danger of becoming the Michael Owen of tennis: so good, so quickly that it seemed only a matter of the passing years that would determine when, not if, he would be the greatest. And then he got detroyed by Nadal in the French after a couple of years of Nadal getting closer and indifferent form by the man the marketing men call RF. And then Nadal beat him at Wimbledon. Federer’s US Open victory at the US Open was then seen as little more than a consolation.
Yesterday Federer won the match easily and watching it was just a frustrating hiatus before the moment of history was made. And since Soderling dumped out Nadal, it looked like Federer’s title to lose (which is why, had Fernando Gonzalez beat Soderling I would have put money on Federer to lose the final).Incidentally, was there anything more encouraging to people with unfashionable names to see two major sporting figures battling it out for one of the premier titles in the sport with the crowd cheering: “C’Mon Roger” or “Allez Robin”?
I actually have a love-hate relationship with tennis which, in a cynical attempt to get more traffic, I will outline on the eve of Wimbledon. But it is truly exciting to have seen the Greatest Male Tennis Player of All Time at his peak, in my lifetime.
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