Sports Articals

By Pete Bodo

Ultimately, it may be remembered by tennis historians and students of the game as The Tiebreaker, II (That Bjorn Borg-John McEnroe 18-16 fourth-set tiebreaker in the 1980 Wimbledon final will always lack a numeral). Only this time, the theme wasn't the ferocity of the clashing wills or the velocity of the serves and passing shots. The Tiebreaker, II, will be discussed in hushed tones, always with a hint of pity (among the kind) or triumphalism (among the callous), because of the enormous, nearly tragic error it embodied, and the way that critical misjudgment by Andy Roddick opened the floodgates of glory for Roger Federer.

It happened like this: Roddick, playing at the peak of his game, had won the first set and capitalized on two errors by Federer to build a 6-2 lead in the second-set tiebreaker - four set points for a two-set lead. Federer wiped away the first three of those points with a clean backhand winner, an ace, and an unreturnable service. Roddick had one more chance, and he went bold. He hit a second serve and set up a perfect forehand approach. As he hurtled toward the net behind his crisp shot, Federer hit a forehand down the line. The ball looked as if it were going out. Pete Sampras, whose surprise appearance a little earlier in the Royal Box had sent a restless murmur through the crowd, certainly thought it was heading that way. "It looked to me like Andy just changed his mind," Pete told me later. "That was a huge moment."

Roddick speared the awkward, high-backhand volley and drove it way wide. He explained later: "There was a significant wind behind him on that side. It was gusting pretty good at that time. When he first hit it, I thought I wasn't gonna play it. Last minute, it looked like it started dropping. I couldn't get my racket around on it. I don't know if it would have dropped or not."

Nobody will ever know - the waters bursting forth carried away that shot - as they did so many other breathtaking winners and agonizing errors hit by the two men. It took those waters a long time to reach flood stage and sweep Federer into the vault of history, and for that we must credit Roddick. He miraculously recovered his composure almost immediately, and continued to play commanding tennis on equal terms with Federer for the rest of the match. He surrendered the bone when he was broken for the first time, in the 77th and final game of the match. The final score was 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14.

By the time it was all over, the sky over Hampstead Heath bore traces of evening rose and the elapsed time stood at 4:08. The match was so long that it seemed as if The Tiebreaker, II had occurred in another time and another place, perhaps when men wore those long white trousers Federer had on in the warm-ups through an entire match. And to his credit, Roddick found the determination and composure to make it seem that something as ghastly as that second-set tiebreaker could only have happened to someone else - not the 26-year old Yankee who on this day matched Federer's ground play, and was unperturbed by seeing Federer nearly double his own ace count, 50-27.

So much for the universally-held idea that this was to be a battle of Roddick's monstrous serve against Federer's return and his fetching arsenal of groundstrokes. Roddick put it this way, when I asked if this reverse mirror-image surprised him as it did most of us. "I don't know. You know, he served great. I didn't get a lot of second looks. I felt like when we were in rallies for the last couple of sets, I was actually doing all right and holding my own, if not more. But he just served great. He did what he had to do. If he wouldn't have served as well, I'd probably be sitting here in a better mood."

Here are some numbers to play with: 42 percent of Roddick's serves went unreturned, compared to Federer's 46 percent. Roddick put 70 percent of his first serves into play, compared to Federer's 64 percent (put into context with Federer's ace count - this is a tribute to Federer's superb placement). Roddick's fastest serve clocked in at 143 mph, but Federer was right up there with 135. Yet all of this wonderful serving - and trust me, it was like watching twin, competing fireworks displays, the engineer behind each determined not to be outdone by the other - was mere background for the battle of will and nerves.

Roddick's greatest triumph was his ability to rebound from that devastating second-set tiebreaker and continue to play what may be remembered as the match of his life. Federer's towering achievement (leaving out the little detail about this being his record 15th Grand Slam title) was his ability to escape the second-set gallows and then never, ever grow discouraged as Roddick rained down hail fire and whistled Nadal-esque rockets past him from the baseline.

There was, however, one oddity about this confrontation: the lack of serve-and-volley play by both men on a day when they both served lights-out. Roddick won three of his four serve-and-volley points, while Federer won four of his seven direct advances on the net. Roger seemed determined to show that he would, over time, win off the ground; Roddick appeared to reply, "No way." At first it appeared suicidal, but it slowly morphed into a monument to Roddick's improved game and his combative spirit.

Federer's poise underscored a reality of the Swiss gentleman's career that is easily neglected while everyone focuses on the apparent ease of his game and his signal aplomb. Roddick put it best when he was asked to comment on Federer's qualities as a champion. "I don't know where to start there. . . He was having trouble picking up my serve today for the first time ever, but he just stayed the course. . . You didn't even get a sense that he was even really frustrated by it. He just toughed it out. He gets a lot of credit for a lot of things, but not how a lot of the time, how many matches, he kind of digs deep and toughs it out. He doesn't get a lot of credit for that because it looks easy to him (sic) a lot of the times. But he definitely stuck in there today."

For his part, Sampras said: "Roger has that ability to make the tough things look easy. He was also a little lucky today, but that's not surprising. The great ones are always a little lucky."

Ultimately, the kind of patience to which Roddick alluded - "patience" being a word not frequently applied to a man as mercurial and fleet as Federer - was not just the key to this match, but to the new champion's entire year so far. Here was a man many were willing to write off as a spent cartridge after his game and customary sangfroid and confidence appeared to utterly desert him in the Australian Open final.

Here was a man who seemed in utter disarray during the early U.S. hardcourt season, the pliant and easygoing genius devolving into a racket smashing, suddenly introverted and belligerent champion who appeared to feel - for the first time - the full weight of his obligations as the greatest player of his and perhaps any time.

Here was a man who struggled, sometimes mightily, when the one major title that eluded him - and which held the key to his legacy - was offered up to him on a gilt-edged plate by virtue of Rafael Nadal's shocking loss on Parisian clay.

Here was a man who was thrown an assortment of knuckle and curve balls in the way of opponents and twists and turns of fate on the road to his French Open and Wimbledon titles.

Through that entire period, Roger was sometimes moved to say what he must have felt - that not even a champion of his caliber is absolved from the ups-and-downs of life. There's nothing wrong with Roger Federer. There was nothing amiss in his life or game that the challenge presented by Grand Slam events couldn't dispel or relegate to the deep background. There was nothing wrong with his attitude, nor any game-changing power shift threatening to deny him his place in history.

That's patience: the singular characteristic of every great champion who's ever hefted a racket.

By contrast, the most menacing emotion a player of any level has to deal with is fear, or succumbing to nerves when it most counts. Today, by the time the match rose to the plane of an epic, Federer was insulated from trepidation by his patience and experience. As he said:

"I used to get nervous when a friend would come watch me play as a kid, and then it was my parents, and then it was legends and people I really - who mean something. Today, it's okay. Today, anybody can come and watch me play. I don't get nervous anymore. Today with Pete (Sampras) it was a bit special, you know. When he walked in and I saw him for the first time, I did get more nervous, actually."

After sheepishly confessing this apparent contradiction, Federer also revealed that he took the trouble to mumble a well-disguised "hello" to his pal Sampras, in one of his moments wandering at the baseline below the Royal Box. "That's unusual," he admitted. "But I thought, I don't want to be rude, you know?"

As is often the case when great accomplishments are logged, there was a sort of tristesse after Federer secured the title. This was less evident in the winner's press conference (at times, it was downright jolly) than in the spent atmosphere hanging over all of Wimbledon. This was a sort of symbolic victory for Roddick; he fought so well, so hard, and so bravely that the quality of the match overshadowed even the majesty of Federer's achievement. Not that Federer begrudged him. He didn't need to ride out of Centre Court in his white military-style jacket, on the back of an elephant.

Federer was rather idiotically asked if he felt like he's the "happiest person," and he fielded the question with more attention than it probably deserved: "I don't know. . . I mean, I'm very happy. I don't know if I'm the happiest person in the world. I don't think so. I think there's many happy people out there. Tennis doesn't make you - it doesn't do it all. There's more to life than just tennis. But I feel great."

The obligatory question about Rafael Nadal's absence from the draw was bound to come up, and when it did, Roger said he didn't feel the situation diminished his achievement by one iota. "I don't think it should," he said. "Everybody expected (Andy) Murray to be in the finals. He wasn't there. It's not the mistake of the one who wins in the end. . . You never know how he (Rafa) would have played, but it's sad he couldn't even give it a fair chance. Tennis moves very quickly, you know."

Yesterday, it moved very quickly indeed - at about 143 and 135 mph, respectively. But the most impressive number on this historic day was a much smaller one, 15.

Good night, everyone - travel day tomorrow. See y'all on Tuesday.