Dorks And Losers

With his 7–6, 7–6, 6–4 win over Novak Djokovic Sun­day, Roger Fed­erer won his fourth con­sec­u­tive U.S. Open cham­pi­onship — a men’s ten­nis Open Era record. The cham­pi­onship also ties him with Roy Emer­son for sec­ond place on the all-time list of men’s career Grand Slam titles (12), leav­ing behind Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver (both with 11), and trail­ing only Pis­tol Pete Sam­pras who has a ridicu­lous 14.

Fed­erer is in pretty elite com­pany as it is, but only one man stands between him and being the great­est ten­nis player ever. Okay, maybe two.

You can read count­less arti­cles from numer­ous coaches and ana­lysts as to why Fed­erer is so great. They’ll pretty much all say the same thing: he has tremen­dous focus on the court, he has great foot­work, and he has unfail­ing mechanics.

Hav­ing those help. But Fed­erer is great because he knows how to play ten­nis. And I’m not talk­ing about hit­ting a fore­hand or serv­ing, we’ve already estab­lished his amaz­ing mechan­ics. I’m talk­ing about his under­stand­ing of how to win a match.

You play the right points. The dirty lit­tle secret in ten­nis that not many peo­ple empha­size is that to win matches all you need to do is hold your serve (more easy than not if you have at the least a solid serve) and you break your opponent’s serve just once to take the set. Do that again and you’ve just won.

Fed­erer knows this bet­ter than most. Con­serve your energy. Hold your serve, which is always advan­ta­geous to the one serv­ing. Play high-percentage ten­nis, hit cross-court, and min­i­mize unforced errors. Choose the moments dur­ing your ser­vice returns to go on the offen­sive and pound the oppo­nent hard.

I’ll use gam­bling in Las Vegas as an exam­ple, and Danny Ocean in Ocean’s 11 said it best: “Cause the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless, when that per­fect hand comes along, you bet and you bet big, then you take the house.”

Your oppo­nent is the house, and that moment when you need to take it up a notch to break serve is the bet­ting big part. If you watch Fed­erer play, he’s prob­a­bly the most relaxed player in the whole tour­na­ment. Why? Because he’s not sweat­ing every point, nor does he have to win every point. He learned long ago that play­ing every point is some­what detri­men­tal to the match itself and to your over­all play career-wise. It’s some­thing the very tal­ented Marat Safin never learned himself.

Look at Rafael Nadal. He’s won three con­sec­u­tive French Open titles (the hard­est Slam) for two rea­sons. One, he’s supremely fit. Two, he’s tough and he’ll play every point to wear you out. That’s the way he plays. That’ the way to win on clay. But remem­ber that he’s still only 21 years old. He’s young enough to do that. But I bet that he’ll adjust his style as he gets older (unlike the great Michael Chang), adapt to a less-strenuous style to hope­fully avoid injury (he’s already had some) and sim­ply because he’ll learn he doesn’t need to.

Take a glimpse at Federer’s U.S. Open results, round for round. He played a total of 23 sets, los­ing only two of them. Only five of the sets went to a tiebreaker, two with poor Djokovic who SHOULD have won both those sets by the way. Fed­erer won another ten sets at set scores of either 6–3, 6–4, or 7–5; in order words, he won the set by a sin­gle break (and I’m not look­ing at indi­vid­ual sets to see if Fed­erer was bro­ken him­self and and had to break his oppo­nent more than once). He did not dough­nut a sin­gle oppo­nent, but he did win three sets with a set score of 6–1.

I’m not try­ing to take any­thing away from Federer’s game. He has seri­ous game. Sav­ing seven set points in the first and sec­ond sets against Djokovic takes absolute skill and focus. But to win 12 Grand Slam titles means more than just hit­ting win­ners up the line, know­ing when to approach the net to vol­ley, or attempt­ing a drop-shot with your oppo­nent three feet behind the base­line. It’s about know­ing how to win.

And Federer’s dom­i­nance over the last two years is proof enough. Out of the last eight Grand Slam cham­pi­onships, Fed­erer has won six of them. And of the two he didn’t win, the 2006 and 2007 French Open, he lost in the finals to the same clay court god Nadal. Ana­lysts can’t stop repeat­ing the fact that clay is Roger’s worst sur­face to play on. But that’s try­ing to arti­fi­cially cre­ate a weak­ness for the man even though he was still the second-best player at Roland Garros.

Here’s an inter­est­ing sta­tis­tic of Roger’s utter dom­i­nance over his peers the last few years. Dat­ing back to the 2004 Aus­tralian Open, Fed­erer has made it to the Grand Slam finals in thir­teen out of a pos­si­ble six­teen, with a record of 11–2 in those finals. That’s absolutely disgusting.

All through­out the U.S. Open tele­casts, it was repeated by many of the com­men­ta­tors that Fed­erer will never be con­sid­ered the best ten­nis player in his­tory unless he wins a French Open, even if he fin­ishes his career with twenty major titles.

He’s only 26 years old, mind you. He’s reached the last two French Open finals, and he has beaten Nadal on clay before (although Nadal did say he was a bit tired that Mas­ter Series tour­na­ment in Ham­burg (May 14-May 20, 2007). He’s bet­ter on clay, and I think he will win the French Open before he’s through. But know­ing Fed­erer, he wouldn’t stop at win­ning just one.

Twenty Grand Slam titles might seem like a stretch for Fed­erer to achieve, but I wouldn’t bet against the great­est ten­nis player ever.

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