Few tennisists have been uploaded at age 40 moving between the elite.
Further, with a baggage like Roger Federer.
You have to travel to the times of Jimmy Connors, who, already battered by his back problems, was planted at 39 in the semifinals of the United States Open of 1991. Or, going far behind, from Ken Rosewall, which reached the
Final in New York with 39 years and 310 days, in 1974, to find players capable of maintaining their validity at an age close to the Swiss Sunday.
Connors and Rosewall conquered eight titles of the Grand Slam.
Federer has stopped in 20.
You can say, and it is true, that Basel’s player has initiated an irremediable appearance decline, as he insinuated with his elimination in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon, dyed of a cruel thread in the third partial against Polish Hubert Hurkacz.
But the truth is that it is still the number 9 of the world and, after giving up the Olympic Games for its recurring knee problems, it plans to play from August 27, its twentieth US opened, tournament who has earned five occasions
, the most recent in 2008.
Everything starts at the 20 Majors, the same ones that Rafael Nadal, 35, and Novak Djokovic, 34, whose authority is nominated as the best place to unbalance the exciting litigation and achieve, in addition, conquer the four large
Same season, something that only subscribed Donald Budge and Rod Laver, this twice.
Federer enters the 40 after a season in which he has only won nine of the 13 games he has been able to play.
While meditating on the uncertain and inevitably short of him, the ephemeris invites Glosar a colossal legacy, initiated in 2003 with the first of his eight Wimbledon titles.
Endowed with exquisite technical qualities and member of a time where professionalization facilitates dilate the lives of athletes, you do not have to look too far to find your close attempt to win at the All England Club and have placed the Vigesimoprim Large
On your business card.
It was at the end of 2019, when he ordered two balls of tournament against Djokovic before falling at the premiere of the so-called ‘supertiebreak’.
The fervent public that cried out to see him with the cup once again, in the unforgettable atmosphere of that afternoon of July, he was aware that he was before a last linker of destiny, and he felt the defeat almost as his own, no matter flags, only the
Narrow sentimental filiation that has built around the world throughout his career from a way of interpreting the game related to beauty like no other.
“I think my style is very relaxed and probably beautiful to see for some people, especially for the old generation, such as Manolo Santana, for example, they may feel more reflected in me than in other players with reverse two hands and another form
to play. That is the reason why I think I have a great support from the fans, both of the people of the street and the legends. That’s why I have a good image, “he commented a few years ago in an interview with this newspaper
.
Someone wrote that Federer is not tennis player, but musician. There is a poetic and accurate approach to the genius in those words, which draw the perception of proceeding on the court. The presence of him in any tournament is a claim not only for tennis fans, but for detached spectators of pure sports competition. Two seasons ago, in which it was presumed as its possible farewell of Roland Garros, El Diario l’équipe dedicated an independent number under the title “SA Majested Federer. 10 Légende Moments”. Not only Wimbledon, where the game of him acquires the best benefits, established an eternal idyll with Federer. Despite having raised a single title about Parisian land, no tennis player has earned such devotion in the French capital. He returned this season and overcame the first three rounds, before leaving with the desire to preserve his physique for the frustrated adventure in the grass. Something similar happens in Melbourne and New York. No point on the planet escapes fascination by Federer.
That angry young man who won almost two decades ago in Milan The first of his 103 titles is today a peaceful father of four children, the twins Myla and Charlene, 12, and the Goldos Leo and Lenny, of seven, all of them fruit of
His relationship with former tennis player Mirka Vavrinec, with whom he married in the spring of 2009. Faced with what may seem, the beginnings of Federer had nothing to do with the imprint and elegant of the one who burst into the
heights.
Nobody as he has managed to sustain the primal essence of the renewed game with the own weapons of modernity.
“Today’s professionals are significantly larger, strong and are better prepared physically, and it is true that high-tech composite rackets have increased their ability to pull at high speed and give the ball effect. That is why so
The fact that someone with Federer’s consummate Fineness has come to dominate the male circuit is a reason for great confusion between dogmatics, “wrote David Foster Wallace in tennis as religious experience (Literature Ramdon House).
With a game that evokes that of the lifelong classics, it has traversed different generations, always finding answers up to the most committed adversaries.
The largest of them is called Rafael Nadal, next to whom he has starred on one of the most beautiful rivalries of sport.
Zurdo, with an extreme degree of combativity and a lifted striking that devalues the qualities of Federer, the Spaniard exerted as the main antidote of him.
After losing two consecutive finals, he was able to defeat him on Wimbledon’s grass, in that 2008 party considered by many specialists as the best as always.
The whip of Nadal seemed to have no remedy, but the Swiss, in another boast of intelligent perseverance and strategic audacity, managed to reverse the trend.
The face to face still points 24-16 in favor of Nadal, but it is no more verified that Federer has won seven of his last 10 clashes, including the Wimbledon semifinal of 2019 and the Australian final of two years before, where
He got the decimonovenus of his greats.
Sadly, it will be difficult to see you confront again.
There are few and a player’s pending accounts who have won almost everything and can boast of colossal records. Only the individual Olympic gold, from which Andy Murray deprived him at the London 2012 final, on Wimbledon’s grass, will be alien to the collection of awards from him. Federer made the letter of presentation of him in the 2001 edition of the London tournament, when he won in the end of the end to Pete Sampras, who had consecutively achieved four of him in the cathedral. Sampras, with the big 14, was the last magnificent before the splendorous was that he still shares the so-called Big Three. The Washington player announced the withdrawal of him months after raising his fifth opened from the United States. Maybe neither Federer himself knows when and how he will take the departure door. The only certainty is that the goodbye to him will leave an irreplaceable emptiness, beyond how he has finished distributing the booty in the heights when the destination ending a melody that will sound eternally like no other in the collective memory.
