Writing the Roger Federer story

What all does the Age of Roger Federer encompass? Is it about him alone? In a career that has gone past his incredible rivalry with Rafael Nadal and, as we saw this week in the Australian Open, that now adds a distinct shine to Novak Djokovic’s current dominance, Federer has lifted the profile of his sport in ways we are yet to fully articulate. He is the greatest, and a significant measure of his greatness lies in pulling into a higher orbit tennis players who’d defeat him. Would Federer have been considered as exceptional had he been playing in another time? Definitely. Would Nadal’s failure to get his career back to its earlier trajectory been as heartbreaking if he had not been the other half, the Rafa-Roger world number one-two ranking for so long? Or would Djokovic be held in as much awe if he had the same winning record without having pulled past Federer and Nadal? Both unlikely.

Writing about Fed

However, writing about Federer can easily become a self-indulgent exercise, and perhaps we must await a memoir from him of the order of Andre Agassi’s Open to truly understand him. Till then, we have inadequate attempts like William Skidelsky’s Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession, a book so self-indulgently obsessive that it’s mesmerizing till you soon snap out of it, as you inevitably will.

It takes a writer of the calibre of Simon Barnes to put our collective obsessiveness about Federer, even in this latter part of his playing life, in perspective. He writes in A Book of Heroes: Or a Sporting Half-Century: “Even if someone were to come along and beat his record in terms of numbers, it is unlikely that they would do so by means of such beauty and artistry, such style. Federer really is the greatest of all time. It is not necessary to worship him as a god: but a certain amount of deference is — well, therapeutic.”

Perhaps the easier, make-do way to get a measure of him is, in fact, by examining him along with the competition — as the journalist L. Jon Wertheim did in his book, Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played. The match was, of course, the Wimbledon final of 2008, remembered as much for the tennis as for the way it changed the course of both careers. Nadal would go on that summer to displace Federer as world number one, and take the tennis singles gold at the Beijing Olympics.

But the book I find myself returning to after binge-watching sport is Here and Now. Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee had written letters to each other between 2008 and 2011, clearly for eventual publication, discussing whatever was top of the mind for them at the particular moment. For readers of literary fiction, the book is obviously special. But it’s one that should be recommended to all sports fans, particularly those like me afflicted with low-grade guilt at spending all that time in front of the television set. Writes Coetzee: “Like you, I think that watching sport on television is mostly a waste of time. But there are moments that are not a waste of time, as would for example crop up now and again in the glory days of Roger Federer… I scrutinise such moments, revisiting them in memory — Federer playing a cross-court backhand volley, for instance. Is it truly, or only, the aesthetic, I ask myself, that brings such moments alive for me?… I have just seen something like the human ideal made visible.”
In response, Auster, ever ready to be persuaded by Coetzee on anything, writes: “As for the exaltation you talk about when watching Federer in his glory days, I am in total accord with you.”

But Auster had been encouraged down that sport-is-a-waste-of-time line earlier. Coetzee had spent most of a Sunday watching the third day of an Australia-South Africa Test match, “emotionally involved” in the game. And: “In order to watch the game I put aside the two or three books I am in the middle of reading.” Cricket, he explains to his American friend, has been played for centuries, and in all those matches over the years it was likely that the contest that particular day had been approximated in another match some time, somewhere. Whereas each good book is something new. So he asks Auster: “Does any of this sound familiar to you? Does it strike a chord you recognise? Is sport simply like sin: one disapproves of it but one yields because the flesh is weak?”

Of course it is not. But it a good standard to hold the great sportspersons against — that their exploits amount to something more than entertainment. Call it the Federer Standard.