Watching Roger Federer take a cleaver to some guy the other night (I can't even remember his name anymore) got me thinking along a track that, ultimately, brought The Mighty Fed into sharper and clearer perspective for me.
Sound familiar (The Oxymoron)? Well, in this case, the old-school player I found myself thinking about was Rod Laver. The similarities and differences between TMF and Laver are not as numerous or compelling as the ones between Rafael Nadal and Jimmy Connors. In fact, the main similarity is that Federer and Laver were both players of superb "balance", physiologically as well technically. In other words, both were blessed with manifest versatility, and the physical characteristics to make the most of it). They both blunted or negated the power of some of their most formidable rivals with a combination of superb tools and a lightness of foot - you don't have great balance without treading lightly.
I was struck, as many of you were the other night, by how frequently Federer attacked against Fabrice Santoro. He approached net 54 times (more than twice the number posted by Santoro), and was successful 44 times, for a superb winning percentage of 81. Granted, Santoro's lack of effective passing shots was striking, but still. . .
About halfway through the beatdown, I became convinced that I was seeing a "new" Federer. And that made me think of the "old" Federer - you know, the guy from, oh, 2007, who played and won mostly from the baseline because he could. The embedded truth is that for the past few years, the contemporary game hasn't been good enough for Federer. It has not made him use more strategic tools than the ones on the the top tray of his box.
But that, I think, is changing. Federer appears to be moving up the next plateau and, in my book, it's not a moment too soon.We saw the degree to which Rafael Nadal pushed TMF at Wimbledon last July, as well as the pressure Novak Djokovic put him under in the US Open final. It would be entirely Federer-esque for him to meet this gradual closing of the competition gap by going to what might well be his nuclear option: attacking. As I auto-posted this yesterday, I'm not sure how he fared against Janko Tipsarevic, but I'm guessing that his newfound appetite for attacking was undiminished.
It was joy to behold Federer coming in to the net. It was satisfying, both aesthetically and practically. That's what Laver did, because his superb balance enabled him to pursue the strategy. As a man of comparable gifts, starting with great mobility and nimbleness, the only way the strategy would backfire on TMF is if the game has indeed changed as much as some claim. For me, watching TMF win from the baseline is comparable to seeing Aerosmith do Walk This Way, unplugged. I get the point, but the essence of that song demands being plugged in. When Federer tapped his attacking skills, his game simply resonated with great power and deeper, richer tones than before.
As I'm writing a book with Pete Sampras, we've discussed his budding friendship with Roger Federer at some length. I'm not comfortable divulging the contents of some conversations that Pete more-or-less shared with me (Federer does not loom as a dominant figure in Pete's memoir, A Champion's Mind). But I'll say this: these two guys talked a lot of tennis in their time together, both in Los Angeles and during the Far East exhibition tour. And I can't imagine them having talked tennis without getting into subjects like the state of the attacking game. I have a theory about that, but it's my personal attempt to connect some dots, rather than a transmission of facts straight from Pete.
I suspect that talking tennis and playing with Sampras gave Federer a new perspective on the attacking game, at a time when his prowess may have lulled him into discounting the value of attacking strategies, not just as tactics but as energy-saving ploys. I acan't imagine that Federer ran out onto the courts to practice chip-and-charge tactics on Sampras's say-so, but I can imagine Federer closing the room to his suite after Pete left and thinking about things. My guess is that a seed was planted. And if so, it was planted at precisely the right moment for Federer. For in some ways, he's been treading water as he waited for the game to catch up.
I expect that TMF is going to attack more, and more consistently, in the coming months. The only thing I see that might keep him from doing it is the natural reluctance to change a winning game when it comes to facing his main rivals. There's a world of difference between experimenting with a style or strategy when you're facing a Diego Hartfield instead of a Rafael Nadal, and therein lies the main challenge for TMF.
Sometimes, players are unable or unwilling to change their games (it's most often the former), and as the status quo in the game shifts, they get caught in the crunch (Martina Hingis, Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt can all tell you about that). It looks to me like Federer is willing to change his game and, because of his lethal versatility, he has the ability to realize the desire.
This, to me, will be one of the most compelling themes as the Australian Open rolls on.
(Quick aside by Andrew - Pete set up this post before leaving for the game rich Andes. A Mr J Tipsarevic put the "new" Federer to quite a test, one he eventually passed. Please treat this as an On Topic thread).