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By
Alix Ramsay
It’s a funny thing about grand slam finals—they
are usually rubbish. Two tense men on the verge of greatness
tend not to produce their best. More often than not the story
of the final, of how the champion got there, of what he had
to overcome, is better than the match itself. In that category,
Pete Sampras beating Andre Agassi at the U.S. Open last year
is about as good as it gets. That is, of course, unless you
are Goran Ivanisevic. His 2001 Wimbledon victory was the stuff
of fairytales.
But when it comes to the tennis, the sport played at the very
highest level in all its pure, raw, majestic beauty, good
finals are hard to find. Step forward, then, Roger Federer:
Wimbledon champion, extremely nice bloke and master of the
dark arts of tennis wizardry. His defeat of Mark Philippoussis
was swift, it was spectacular and it was a delight to watch.
He gave us three sets of artistry and we wanted more. And
yet we didn’t.
Over the course of two matches and six sets of brilliance,
he had brushed aside the muscular challenges of Andy Roddick
and Philippoussis. He was playing at such a level, so far
beyond the reach of everyone else in the draw, that none of
us wanted it to end. But the thought that Philippoussis could
extend the battle and win a set or two brought with it the
fear that Federer’s spell would be broken and that would
have been too much to bear. This was, indeed, magic.
My colleague Simon Barnes of The Times in London had watched
Federer dismantle Roddick with power, with finesse and with
touch and he was enthralled. An astute observer of sport and
a sensible man whose passion is horses—and they are not
given to flights of fancy—Barnes concluded that Federer’s
racquets were not delivered in bulk from Wilson but purchased
secretly at Ollivanders in Diagon Alley. They were not made
of Kevlar and graphite but of the wood of the holly tree with
a core of phoenix feather. This was not Roger Federer in the
semifinals; this was Harry Potter with the Racquet of Fire.
And, by crikey, he was right—I just wish I had thought
of it first.
As the tournament had rumbled on, there were no huge surprises—even
Lleyton Hewitt’s early departure had been on the cards
had we but noticed—and little by way of emotion. Much,
then, was made of an open letter to the International Tennis
Federation requesting the removal of the sledgehammer racquet
from the game. Powerful racquets produced powerful tennis,
where muscle counted for more than talent. The good, the great
and the merely pompous put their name to the letter only to
be made to look like chumps as Federer disproved their theory
over 48 hours and two matches of genius. Even Boris Becker,
a signatory, admitted as much as he marveled at the final.
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