Growing up with your favorite athlete as he goes through the various stages of his luminous career does weird things to you. Every generation has its childhood sports idol: the one that makes you scan newspapers, t. v channels, internet and even radios in places where the technology hasn’t really caught up and where you’ve sadly been held back through no fault of your own to find out what’s going on in that person’s world and then put them in a higher place. pedestal than your seemingly most important test scores and other things that, at least in the eyes of your parents and friends, would consider you a sane soul. (This explanation is for all sports icons except for one Sachin Tendulkar, who by spanning three generations gives a whole new dimension to the word “omnipresent”. Perhaps that is why he is called GOD.)
The thing about having that athlete who occupies a demigod status in your scheme of things is that you start to have a prejudice that doesn’t make you feel guilty at all. For example: my father makes a big deal out of the Bjorn Borg/John McEnroe era saying that anything else that happened after that in tennis is a tragic parody of the game more geometrically and aesthetically pleasing than the world has known. My brother, Pete Sampras’s man through and through, found it difficult to adjust to the fact that a virtual nobody like Roger would show him the way out of his Wimbledon kingdom in that famous summer of 2001, which in hindsight was akin to the death of the tennis torch. That damn player has a ponytail and a bandana. What “champion” dresses like this? Tennis is going to be poorer after Pete. My brother relays these statements that impart to me that sense of losing something unique and that something that I could never be blessed to be a part of. Approximately 2 years later, a tennis “Mozart” with a style that is a throwback to the classic era, but combines it with a touch of the modern that alludes to raw power and precision and then blesses it with the grace and the delicacy of a virtuoso artist. my idol, the one whose wins, losses and battles within a battle have captivated my senses and filled me with the gratitude of seeing something special unfold in front of me and along with an off-court demeanor that has made it in a recent poll , the second most respected person in the world after Nelson Mandela. . . the Swiss Master – Roger Federer.
I became his man, my side of the debate when arguing with someone about who is the GOAT – the greatest of all time (although the most heated ones are reserved for my brother) and I have a little experience in the quirks of “fan – dom” has helped me to be sure of one thing. I will ignore Grigor Dimitrov, Bernard Tomic or Jerzy Janowicz regardless of what they achieve in the future. No offense intended, actually, I’m going to be the same person as my father and brother. Only time will tell, because records are meant to be broken, and if reluctantly, Swiss records will also be broken, which I hope I will accept, but as they say, one will always be partial to those. Instances and people that have touched you in a special way in your childhood
Being smitten with talent is one thing, making it count is another. Roger Federer has done exactly that and that is why after a horrible 2013 by his exemplary standards, where lesser people feel it is their right to point out to him that he should quit the game before plummeting to depths that none of us would bear. he thinks of his glory years, he feels that it is a grave injustice to tell him what to do. He has come so far from being that cranky, hot-headed young man to the serene monk-like master illusionist who used to conjure up moments of supreme beauty with that tennis racket of his, a la Michaelangelo with a scalpel. His career, from the evidence, appears to be that of a person who made the most of life’s lessons and used them as a basis for claiming that he is possibly one of the greatest sportsmen to ever strut his stuff on the world stage. . . A loss to Tommy Robredo or Sergiy Stakhovsky shakes things up a bit, but it is admitted that Roger does not intend his career to end that way and, in the words of another tennis legend, Pete Sampras, there is an amateur actor in the whole person who wants to put together a final act that brings down the house. Roger might feel that (just a hunch), but as he said during one particular season in 2008 when he lost in the Australian Open semi-finals to a rising Novak Djokovic, he was met with a shock of seismic proportions, which he could have created a monster with the load of expectations that every movement of his racket receives.
Next season he returns with that elusive first French Open title that catapulted him into the elite league of extraordinary gentlemen who have won all four slams, and then breaks Pete’s Grand Slam record in a marathon duel with Andy Roddick in a final. from Wimbledon. For the ages he has returned and surely will if he feels like it and that is what recent interviews of him suggest. . . he is hungry for more. We always count champions when they’re down without taking note of that one separating factor that has set them apart from pretenders. His mental strength. Professional sport is more about the battles that take place between the ears than it is about the actual battle. It is a beautiful sign when you come across articles by many journalists and critics stating that his time at the zenith is over and that he should stop trying so it will not be painful for his followers to see him reduced to a mere mortal. , but then you see the words of Rod Laver and Pete Sampras, legends in their own right and players who claim to be the GOAT, who state emphatically that Roger Federer is not yet a finished article and that something monumental is going to happen. of Roger’s magic wand. They’ve been there and you can feel something simmering under Roger, the outrage that he’s being told what to do with the sport he loves most, and for him that’s the fundamental factor that keeps him going: the love of the sport. He acknowledges the fact that he will never be bigger than the game and it is this enthusiastic and zealous attribute of Roger, of the student who unswervingly explores new and greater depths of his game, to prove himself against the challenges presented by the sport and are various other practitioners, and reaching the top for that is what the best students do. They will find a way. And Roger is very interested in reaching the top. No one reaches 17 Grand Slam titles and 302 weeks at No. 1 without possessing loads of mental toughness.
The hardest part is making it look easy and sure that anyone who has ever touched a tennis racket vouches for it. Therein lies the genius of the Swiss. The same thing that makes me hope that for at least a fortnight, the Swiss will put together a glorious fairy tale run replete with his brilliant backhand down the line (a beautiful thing) and conjuring up those moments of sheer innovation and belligerence along with his impressive dominance in the pitch, tactical acumen and mastery of angles, which you thought weren’t there until he executed the impossible and induced grimaces and looks from his opponents that it just happened, when they felt the point had arrived. it’s already been earned and then you wonder why no one has thought of it before. Then it surprises you: the tennis court is his canvas and we are that privileged and lucky group that gets to see a teacher at work. A glorious epiphany in that too, and when he holds that grand slam trophy aloft, making a fool of time and, more importantly, of those skeptics who felt his epitaph was hanging, it would be the right time for him to retire. with style and seal. his last fragment of an enduring legacy on a tennis court. It’s for two simple reasons: we owe a lot to Roger for giving us so much joy during his time, that only he should decide on his future, and from a more important and selfish perspective: my childhood needs that epic One Last Act.