The Beauty of Knowing (6): Feddy an oldy? Think Again
This guy has been around ever since I was a kid. For the past few years he has made his name synonymous to his sport. There are very few names that have a global reach, fewer still in sports (for, many sports that are popular in one part of the world are not even followed in the other), fewer still in individual sports and fewer still for around two decades. I’ts the last feature that sets Federer apart from the rest of the world. Well, for one thing, two decades is too long and for the another, you have to sweat yourself out each and every time!
To be honest with you I am no tennis freak. It was only an awesome accident that I stumbled upon tennis. My father always used to follow tennis, but I simply wouldn’t allow him to change the channel when I was watching cricket and it happened so that I used to be found always watching cricket. The words live and replay didn’t have any meaning to me! And what father can get the remote from his son! But an uncle is not a father! When my uncle was visiting us he insisted on watching a match saying that some two extraordinary guys were playing and that he wouldn’t miss it for his life. I had to give in, what with hospitality and all! Having nothing else to do I sat in front of the TV. Without knowing the rules itself it’s easy to follow tennis and soon I found that my uncle and father had teamed up to support this guy with long hair. The long-haired dude was also found to be winning. But something made me appreciate the losing guy. At the end of the match Federer had lost to Nadal. But the loser became my winner!
From then onwards I started following tennis as a whole, but I made it my rule to scan the papers for the name Federer. Lo! Those days how one-dimensional sports columns were. It was almost always only cricket. And most of the times the channel that telecat tennis was never subscribed our local cable authorities (even watching cricket was endengered now and then) and the most important factor of all: Internet hadn’t yet reched us yet! But all this hunger did well to feed my curiosity. When I had the chance I never missed it. And as I kept watching the man the effect of his enchantment on me kept proportionally increasing. Once he elegently hit the ball between his legs even without turning around and scored a point, I was done for! He was no man, but a wizard!
I Kept following the game. Slowly more and more importance was given to it in the papers. I started watching the games of Djoker, Murray, twin Williams and the rest as well. The Indian players doing well also turned the attention of the media.
Then came my most memorable game: It featured neither Nadal nor Feddy. They seemed to have slipped into oblivion. This was Wimbledon finals. An English under-dog (during that time) playing the guy who had taken the tennis world storm, Djoker. Supposedly the home side hadn’t won the trophy for such a long time and here was a chance. This generated further curiosity, attracting celebrities like Bradely Cooper (Hangover), Ellen Degeneres (who fantasticlly hosted Oscars 2015: if you haven’t watched her reality show do it first thing!), Beyonce (singer), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and Beckham (footballer). All the reviews and opinions that I had read beforehand lead me to beleive that the most Murray could do was probably go down fighting. But how the match turned out to be! From the word go Murray seemed to be at ease, but the upper-dog (so to say) Djoker was completely out of his everything. Murry crushed his opponenet in three sets straight. I think just because the complete opposite of expectation happened it became my favourite match.
Back to Feddy. I think for the past four years my nerves have been tested to its utmost limit. This guy seemed to be both somewhere and nowhere. Even if he had gone out of the radar it wouldn’t have mattered. But he was always then and there about. He seemed to have developed a speciality to lose either in the semis or in the finals. My friends always kept teasing me, because I kept saying this is it, but that ‘this’ seemed too elusive. At one stage I made up my mind that Feddy had become an oldy and had lost it in him to compete successfully at the highest level. How foolish of me! 2017 comes and the rest is historty as we know it! The pie has been shared equally between the unparalleled rivals.
Grandslams don’t seem like an end to these guys this year. Beauty is to see these dudes playing together now! Thank you Feddy, for letting me know that age is just a number.
