Roger Federer: A delayed appreciation

Written by  //  November 13, 2011  //  Sport  //  10 Comments

I have often found that I appreciate the genius of a great sportsman best in his declining years. This is partly because I have almost always spent the heydays of the great sportsman rooting for someone, if not inconsequential, certainly incapable of elevating himself to true greatness. When Pete Sampras was in his prime, winning Wimbledon for fun, I was supporting Michael Chang (oh, the grossness of some of my choices) and Goran Ivanisevic, hoping that his rowdiness will be rewarded with a title. During the historic Chicago Bulls era of the 1990s, I backed the Utah Jazz and Jeff Hornacek, whom I loved to bits – why exactly, I haven’t a clue. In the Roger Federer–Rafael Nadal era, which even if it can be argued didn’t strictly overlap, I first hoped, the peerlessly cool Marat Safin would regain his on-court magic, and since his retirement that Richard Gasquet would show an iota of mental strength to go with his truly gorgeous game. During the Shaq-Bryant inspired Lakers victories, I backed the Sacramento Kings because I simply couldn’t get enough of Peja Stojakovic’s three-point shooting (particularly when he faded away and shot from behind the backboard). When Michael Schumacher was zipping away to win all those titles, I was first supporting Mika Hakkinen and then, Kimi Raikkonen – the Finns, you would agree, have this iciness, which is so utterly captivating. This often meant, I would find mostly inexplicable reasons to disregard greatness: “oh he’s just a lucky so and so,” I would think. I couldn’t even get myself to support Sachin Tendulkar in the mid 1990s when he was at his imperious best. I may have given anything for Tendulkar to fail and for Mohammad Azharuddin to score runs.

There have of course been exceptions – Steffi Graf, Curtly Ambrose, Wasim Akram and Justine Henin to name a few off the top of my head – but in general, particularly, during the 1990s and early 2000s when fandom was still the most vital aspect of my appreciation of sport, I usually made bizarre choices. Generally, though, when a great sportsman was in decline – whether it was a temporary blip or terminal – I found myself suddenly gravitating towards him. I wanted to see more. I found myself mysteriously rooting for him. I felt like an idiot when Sampras retired for not having supported him when he was at his zenith. How could I not support Michael Jordan when he was being His Airness? How could I have not seen greatness when it was presenting itself with such crystal clarity? When Tendulkar was going though a terrible phase in late 2003, I suddenly found myself backing him, wanting to see him rediscover his mojo, to see him return to his imperious self. All this idiotic fandom may have skewed much of my sports watching, but I believe it has nonetheless given me the perfect perspective to judge some of these sportsmen, a kind of perspective that only unpleasant ruminations can give you.

This sets me up very nicely then to tell you why I want to see resurgence from Federer, a Federer whom I have often disliked and a Federer that I have never supported, not in a single match that I can remember. Maybe I backed him in his fourth round victory against Sampras at Wimbledon in 2001, which brought to an end Pistol Pete’s superb run, but Sampras had had a pathetic year and it’s probable I wanted to see him win. When Novak Djokovic came back from two sets to love down and saved two match points before ending Federer’s run in this year’s U.S. Open in the most cruel of manners, I couldn’t have been more satisfied. Bottom line: I’ve almost never supported Federer, never seen the elegance, in every aspect of his game, that others purr about, although I may have lied about it in past posts to sound sensible. But watching him win the Paris Masters today, for the first time in his career, gave me a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that there may be gas left in him for a final surge.

The same aesthetics that draws people to Federer has, bizarrely, been at the forefront of my dislike for him. No doubt, he has almost always made things look simple. But simplicity doesn’t transcend elegance, and the two certainly don’t always coincide. Federer’s forehand, everyone will agree, is his chief strength – a stroke of amazing virtuosity. But is it really an elegant stroke? I would argue it’s not. Usually, it’s a whiplash, snappy movement and his bodyweight is transferred awkwardly. There is no technical purity to it. Of course, technique is a funny and often overrated concept; it’s the player’s comfort and the ensuing results that matter. And technique is also probably irrelevant to a discussion on aesthetics.[1] But whether it is because of the lack of absolute technical purity or the whiplash motion, I haven’t ever found Federer’s forehand to be beautiful, certainly not in the manner of Henin’s backhand or Edberg’s volleying. The fluidity that people attribute to Federer’s forehand is a myth. In reality it is a jerky stroke, albeit a brilliant and even astounding stroke, which perhaps accentuates his genius, but my irritation with people describing the shot as beautiful, possibly, invoked the anti-Federer in me; even more so than his arrogance and generally pitiful attitude.

Now to his backhand, an often flaky and floundering weapon that even the most ardent Federer fans will agree is his weakness. In his prime, Federer’s foot speed allowed him to step outside the ball and convert his backhands into forehands (the beauty here, it must be noted, was in his movement and not in his forehand). Over the years, his backhand, though, did improve immensely, so much so that it is perhaps at its acme today, even as his game is otherwise waning. And it is his approach to the backhand, again curiously, that I have found most endearing. Repeatedly you would see him shank his backhand, yet he would persist with it, not slicing it as he would have in his early years, and eventually he would produce a remarkable angle, a remarkable winner, entirely out of the blue. The beauty again, though, wasn’t so much in the stroke as it was in the result and in his sheer bloody-mindedness.

Federer’s serve has always been excellent and a hugely underrated aspect of his game. The motion is neat and crisp, and minimalistic, but elegant? On the volley particularly on the drive forehand volley, Federer it must be said, looks supremely splendid – there is a nonpareil regality to it. But endeavoring to deconstruct every aspect of his game to examine the aesthetic appeal of the respective parts, as I have done briefly here, is an ultimately tedious and futile experience that has somewhat soiled my tennis watching experience. Yes, the simplicity of Federer’s strokes, to me as the beholder, hasn’t translated to beauty, but in watching him play in Paris, I realized that I have been a stuck-up asshole.

For in my general irritation with every aspect of his game being described as beautiful, I allowed myself to look beyond what I have always found extraordinarily beautiful, a kind of beauty that I should have been delighting in – his on court movement. I have played tennis, mostly recreationally since I was six, giving it up intermittently every now and then since I was, maybe, fifteen. Each time I try to get back and play, the aspect I find hardest to recover is my movement – it is unquestionably the hardest trait to master. Shot making is essentially an extension of court coverage and therein lies Federer’s genius. If his greatness were to be deconstructed to a single element, it would have to be his movement on the court, which as it happens is also a thing of inimitable beauty.

Now that Federer’s aura has dissipated, I want to see him regain it. I want to watch his game only for his movement, not for the whippy forehand or the erratic backhand, as loveable as it may be, but just to see him cover the court like a prince. For, there never has been a greater representation of transcendence.


[1] Laxman’s leg glance, for instance, may not be technically pure, but it’s certainly beautiful.

About the Author

Suhrith Parthasarathy is a journalist currently living and writing in New York. Suhrith grew up in Chennai, India and studied law at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata. He practiced as an attorney for two years before giving up the law for journalism. He is presently studying for his masters at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. You can find him on Twitter (@suhrith) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/suhrithparthasarathy)

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10 Comments on "Roger Federer: A delayed appreciation"

  1. Sroyon November 13, 2011 at 10:22 pm ·

    Great piece, Suhrith. I used to be (it mortifies me to admit this) anti-Zidane, until mid-way through the 2006 World Cup.

  2. Suhrith November 13, 2011 at 10:27 pm ·

    Thanks a lot, Sroyon. I used to be anti-Zidane too. But I refrained from football examples, primarily because fandom plays so much more of a key role in football that it’s natural, at times, to look beyond some of these great players.

  3. grace November 14, 2011 at 1:27 pm ·

    Hi, this is probably one of the most honest articles i have read in a long time. Personally I’m a BIG BIG BIG roger federer fan and i literally worship the man he is.Most of my friends call him in different names cos he cries after winning and etc.the primary problem with Rf is that he makes tennis too simple and often people don realize the difficulty that comes with it. He has achieved so much and he is the greatest of all times but it is so shameful as to how people even today keep saying he has lost his game.No one will or can ever do what he has done for tennis. His records speak for themselves!In this article I think you have clearly pointed out what irritated you about federer are the things that people like me feel in love with!He moves and glides like a dream!its as if he plays on a cloud!He is the best and he will emerge stronger that ever cos for federer his strength lies not in his skills but his mind is his biggest weapon!

  4. grace November 14, 2011 at 1:31 pm ·

    Hi, this is probably one of the most honest articles i have read in a long time. Personally I’m a BIG BIG BIG roger federer fan and i literally worship the man he is.Most of my friends call him in different names cos he cries after winning and etc.the primary problem with Rf is that he makes tennis too simple and often people don realize the difficulty that comes with it. He has achieved so much and he is the greatest of all times but it is so shameful as to how people even today keep saying he has lost his game.No one will or can ever do what he has done for tennis. His records speak for themselves!In this article I think you have clearly pointed out what irritated you about federer are the things that people like me fell in love with!He moves and glides like a dream!its as if he plays on a cloud!He is the best and he will emerge stronger that ever cos for federer his strength lies not in his skills but his mind is his biggest weapon!

  5. v.sundararajan November 15, 2011 at 1:52 am ·

    an excellent article, suhrith
    ammamma and i read it with absorbing interest
    ughith

  6. Dhananjaya November 16, 2011 at 2:31 pm ·

    Nice piece, as per.

  7. rajasekaran k November 21, 2011 at 4:15 pm ·

    i also feel the same way so far as Federer is concerned,not because what you feel,but because of the superior brand of tennis he played by making mincemeat of all his opponents regularly and consistently for a very long period.no sports man on earth achieved this monotonous success for this long and the only other person who can be compared with him is Tiger Woods.that is why he himself empathized with Woods.i hated his success as he appeared to be a super human and i support him now because he appears to be an ordinary human crying over when he was deafeted by Nadal.Tendulkar is never in that class as he regularly buckles under pressure.remember that he holds the world record for getting out in nervous nineties
    the most number of times even though he holds the record for scoring most no of centuries.

  8. RF Fan November 23, 2011 at 7:31 am ·

    Good one!!

    I call it identity crisis. When the whole world follows or worships or praises something, do the other thing. That’s how you try to convince yourself that you are not just another person in the world!

    Being a fan masks some non-qualities to be identified. But thanks to this article, I would like to look at those aspects once again in his game (old as well as new) …. Just another reason to watch him play ;-)

  9. M.Rajasekhar November 23, 2011 at 10:52 am ·

    Simply superb It is an amazing article it shows how much u have technical depth about tennis.As a Roger fan I am enthralled to read ur comment

  10. Suhrith November 27, 2011 at 5:18 pm ·

    Thanks, all, for your comments! Really appreciate it.

Comments are now closed for this article.