It was all pretty simple, wasn’t it? The irrepressible on the verge of the incredible yielded to the inevitable.
Roger Federer, the master puppeteer, had the strings tangled for a bit, but he finally got them all sorted out – as he has a few times this past week – to end the wonderful run of rising star Marcos Baghdatis and become the first man to win seven Grand Slam titles on the trot – and just the second man after Pete Sampras to win three majors in a row since Rod Laver completed his second Grand Slam.
The striking thing to me was how close Federer came to disaster in that second set (he was down 0-2 and breakpoint) before he rallied, tightened up a few of the nuts and bolts in his technique, and figured out that he wasn’t going to beat Baghdatis simply by ratcheting up the power and trying to overwhelm him with atomic forehands and thundering replies to the best stuff Baghdatis threw out. The fact is, Baghdatis threw out some pretty spectacular stuff.
Baghdatis has a special gift. He’s a counterpuncher with a huge game. That’s a borderline oxymoron, but that’s exactly what makes him so good. Did anyone else notice that almost every time Roger mixed it up with Marcos in one of those ever-escalating rallies, Baghdatis ended up winning the point?
Roger’s victory ultimately was built on variety. Once he stopped trying to overwhelm Marcos and worked out that it was preferable to keep him from hitting winners rather than making him hit winners (an invitation Marcos pounced on with his signature joie de vivre), the tide turned.
The Mighty Fed ended up jerking and pulling and stretching Baghdatis to death – setting him up for attack after attack rather than simply lowering his head and going right at him (that was Marcos’s game plan, and it worked for the better part of the first two sets).
By Monday morning, the book on Marcos is going to be: take the pace off when you can, don’t give him the angles, work the backhand, and wait out the storm. Big deal. That’s not going to keep the Cypriot Cyclone from winning a ton of tennis matches; it will just make him work a little harder for them.
Baghdatis had a slightly different take on all this in his presser; he said that after he went up a set and a break, he started to think too much and subsequently let up. His words:
I think Baghdatis was being a little hard on himself. You can’t keep the Mighty Fed from playing his game, because it’s all his game: attacking, defending rallying, taking the pace off, lathering it on. His game changes to meet his needs; it's chameleon tennis.
Plus, Federer has this deadly talent for plodding along, head down, muttering to himself, spraying balls like some journeyman and suddenly - whoa! – he strikes like a cobra, reeling off three or four brilliant points for the break. I’m not sure there’s anything anyone can do about that; that’s why he’s Roger Federer and you’re not. That’s exactly what he did to break Baghdatis to win the second set, 7-5.
You can’t keep the Mighty Fed from playing his game, but you can try to make him play his game badly, which Baghdatis was very successful at for a patch, albeit with a little help from Federer himself. For early on, the Mighty Fed looked tight – awfully tight.
Aw, heck, I may as well say it. Federer was choking through the first set and part of the second. But isn’t it just like him to choke early in the match, before it really matters, leaving the suicidal, late-match choking to mere mortals?
You noticed how Roger was overwhelmed by emotion on the podium during his victory speech. He alluded to how, “it’s all coming out now.” It was a telling admission. The “all” presumably was the emotion, tension, anxiety – all the baggage that percolates and often causes lesser players to choke, almost always at more decisive moments. The emotional baggage must have been heavy to carry early on; it made The Mighty Fed’s kick serve misfire, and his forehands fly.
In an idle moment during the second set, a fantasy played out in my mind. Roger Federer is on the verge of defeat and he looks up at the President's box and sees Rod Laver sitting there. Horrified, he tells himself Oh my God! That's Rod Laver sitting there - I can’t play like a dog and lose this match in front of that guy!
If you saw the way Federer embraced Laver, twice, during the presentation ceremony, you know that this may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Federer had a private meeting with Laver here earlier this week, and he later said it was moving. Rod Laver held a press conference today (transcript now posted; use the link above), during which he evaluated Federer:
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Federer compared this match with his semifinal tussle with Nicolas Kiefer, and I suppose that’s accurate. Once again, he allowed himself to get drawn into a brawl, and even though brawls aren’t Federer's specialty because they aren't really about two things that define Federer's game: nuance and thought. But once again, Federer’s mind was working even as he was swinging. The single least appreciated quality in The Mighty Fed’s arsenal is his patience.
Here’s something. As I wrote above, Baghdatis is a counterpuncher with a huge game. But Federer has an analogous talent: He’s a finesse player with an amazing capacity to turn on the raw power when he needs it.
Today, patience and experience prevailed. There will be other days; that’s the great thing about tennis. There are always other days. Usually, though, Federer wins Grand Slam titles on them, too.