the best and nothing less
I do not post about athletic happenings particularly often, frantic updates about the perennial disappointment that is the Philadelphia Eagles notwithstanding (and even those have largely been absent, given my current exile from the City of Brotherly Love and the suburbs thereof), but Roger Federer winning his fifth U.S. Open title and thirteenth Grand Slam overall? Is decidedly worth mentioning. Although the final concluded almost four hours ago, I am still grinning somewhat stupidly about it -- that is notable enough in itself, as I am finding it difficult to get irrationally excited about anything these days (schoolwork + Oxford study proposal + occasionally working out (!) + getting my general existence in some semblance of an order = my life, at the moment).
I am not going to claim to be the most ardent of tennis fans, nor the most knowledgeable, but I will say this: when I do watch tennis, I instantly become engrossed, and as for understanding the sport -- well, my earliest memory of tennis dates back to fiddling around with a racket from the 1980s at the age of six and watching a Steffi Graf-Martina Hingis match on TV with my mother. These days, with tennis-loving parents and a boyfriend who more than quite proficient at it, I know enough about the artistry and technique of the sport to appreciate it, I think, even though I myself am rather mediocre at hitting the ball. And, if I were to become particularly and uselessly introspective, I would say that that my very nature is drawn to tennis. Out on the court, there is only the self and the self on the other side of the net that the self is trying to defeat. It requires a great deal of physical fitness, scurrying around after the ball and smashing it back with merciless precision, but it also requires constant thought. Where we amateurs are relieved to simply get the ball back over the net, those who do this for a living are entirely deliberate in their shot making and point construction, something that I still sometimes refuse to believe when the masters pull off strokes that ought to be physically impossible -- the ball is going that fast with this sort of spin, the variations with which one can hit it are practically infinite, one might not even be in position to hit it, and yet he manages to catch the far baseline and enter another winner into the tally? I can think of no sport as solitary or cerebral.
My roommate plays club tennis here at Georgetown and is a rather huge tennis fan. Her tastes run towards more Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, so, naturally, we have strongly conflicting opinions about Roger Federer. She does not like Roger, she told me, because he always appears to keep so much inside when he plays. He does not gleefully fist pump upon winning points (see: Rafa) or, uh, let his mouth run freely (see: Djoker) but is really rather business-like, I concede -- hit this insane angle, dazzle with that volley, pick up the trophy, and go home. But that is what I have always loved about Roger's tennis: the serenity behind the power, the beauty behind the athleticism, the fluid lines of movement, the impenetrable concentration upon his face as he raises his racket to the ball. When he is playing at his best, I cannot help but think that this is what the Impersonal Supreme Being must have meant when (s)he/it implanted that bothersome, asymptote-like notion of perfection into our minds.
Of course, as the entire tennis world and its fringes know, Roger has not been playing at his best for most of the year. There was the mononucleosis-induced loss to Djokovic at the Australian Open semifinals (I did not watch this match as I never watch the Australian Open, courtesy of time zone issues, but my roommate -- future roommate at the time, if I were to be entirely accurate -- definitely let me know about it!). There was humiliation at the hands of Rafa at the French Open (again), which, alas, I did watch over a P2P live stream, over which I had followed the entire tournament, while in Shanghai. Oh, and there was Wimbledon. I was alerted to that minor loss by an accidental glance at the front page of a Chinese sport newspaper that featured a very large graphic of Rafa and his trophy and the words "KING RAFA" (in English) printed above it. Something awfully heavy hit my stomach in that exact moment; until I verified the news over the Internet (I was on a train from Nanjing to Shanghai at the time), I half believed that, surely, it was a joke.
It has not been easy to be a Federer fan this year, enduring the repetition of comments about how he is diminished, mortal, or perhaps finished, definitively (and, worse, believing at points that they were true), and watching that pristine game of tennis of his constantly lacking that polish, that spark. Truthfully, I believe that Roger would inevitably have stumbled upon one of these seasons one of these days. In a state of perfect competition in which everybody is driven to be the very best, nobody can be that good for that long.
For the past handful of years, there has been much talk surrounding Roger's status as maybe the greatest tennis player of all time. Approached from a purely statistical level, winning Grand Slam No. 13 certainly brought him close. (Aside: would it not be awesomely kickass for No. 15 -- that one that would top Pete Sampras's record -- be the French Open?) But what makes him truly great in my terribly insignificant eyes is that, throughout the course of this trying season, he fought onwards and in good spirits. Indeed, he has grown more expressive on the court -- just look at his adorable shimmying of his fists at the conclusion of today's match (near the end of the clip, too cute!) -- just in case any of us doubted, for an instant, that he still loves this game.
It is entirely possible that idolising an athlete is rather passé -- perhaps it would be more fitting for me to stick to historical and political figures, who are easier to defend on a more intellectual level, I think, but to hell with abstract ideas of grandeur and excellence. There is something deeply human that I found while watching Roger Federer play this season and hoisting the spoils of his singular victory at the majors at the end of it all. It is best summarised by some generically uplifting quotation out there that expresses something like this: the true mettle of our character is revealed only when we are at our most humble, our most defeated, and though our burdens be irresistibly heavy, we do not shy from challenge. We struggle onward, and, when beaten, we struggle again until the task that has been set before us is complete.
Signing off, V.M. Bell
I am not going to claim to be the most ardent of tennis fans, nor the most knowledgeable, but I will say this: when I do watch tennis, I instantly become engrossed, and as for understanding the sport -- well, my earliest memory of tennis dates back to fiddling around with a racket from the 1980s at the age of six and watching a Steffi Graf-Martina Hingis match on TV with my mother. These days, with tennis-loving parents and a boyfriend who more than quite proficient at it, I know enough about the artistry and technique of the sport to appreciate it, I think, even though I myself am rather mediocre at hitting the ball. And, if I were to become particularly and uselessly introspective, I would say that that my very nature is drawn to tennis. Out on the court, there is only the self and the self on the other side of the net that the self is trying to defeat. It requires a great deal of physical fitness, scurrying around after the ball and smashing it back with merciless precision, but it also requires constant thought. Where we amateurs are relieved to simply get the ball back over the net, those who do this for a living are entirely deliberate in their shot making and point construction, something that I still sometimes refuse to believe when the masters pull off strokes that ought to be physically impossible -- the ball is going that fast with this sort of spin, the variations with which one can hit it are practically infinite, one might not even be in position to hit it, and yet he manages to catch the far baseline and enter another winner into the tally? I can think of no sport as solitary or cerebral.
My roommate plays club tennis here at Georgetown and is a rather huge tennis fan. Her tastes run towards more Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, so, naturally, we have strongly conflicting opinions about Roger Federer. She does not like Roger, she told me, because he always appears to keep so much inside when he plays. He does not gleefully fist pump upon winning points (see: Rafa) or, uh, let his mouth run freely (see: Djoker) but is really rather business-like, I concede -- hit this insane angle, dazzle with that volley, pick up the trophy, and go home. But that is what I have always loved about Roger's tennis: the serenity behind the power, the beauty behind the athleticism, the fluid lines of movement, the impenetrable concentration upon his face as he raises his racket to the ball. When he is playing at his best, I cannot help but think that this is what the Impersonal Supreme Being must have meant when (s)he/it implanted that bothersome, asymptote-like notion of perfection into our minds.
Of course, as the entire tennis world and its fringes know, Roger has not been playing at his best for most of the year. There was the mononucleosis-induced loss to Djokovic at the Australian Open semifinals (I did not watch this match as I never watch the Australian Open, courtesy of time zone issues, but my roommate -- future roommate at the time, if I were to be entirely accurate -- definitely let me know about it!). There was humiliation at the hands of Rafa at the French Open (again), which, alas, I did watch over a P2P live stream, over which I had followed the entire tournament, while in Shanghai. Oh, and there was Wimbledon. I was alerted to that minor loss by an accidental glance at the front page of a Chinese sport newspaper that featured a very large graphic of Rafa and his trophy and the words "KING RAFA" (in English) printed above it. Something awfully heavy hit my stomach in that exact moment; until I verified the news over the Internet (I was on a train from Nanjing to Shanghai at the time), I half believed that, surely, it was a joke.
It has not been easy to be a Federer fan this year, enduring the repetition of comments about how he is diminished, mortal, or perhaps finished, definitively (and, worse, believing at points that they were true), and watching that pristine game of tennis of his constantly lacking that polish, that spark. Truthfully, I believe that Roger would inevitably have stumbled upon one of these seasons one of these days. In a state of perfect competition in which everybody is driven to be the very best, nobody can be that good for that long.
For the past handful of years, there has been much talk surrounding Roger's status as maybe the greatest tennis player of all time. Approached from a purely statistical level, winning Grand Slam No. 13 certainly brought him close. (Aside: would it not be awesomely kickass for No. 15 -- that one that would top Pete Sampras's record -- be the French Open?) But what makes him truly great in my terribly insignificant eyes is that, throughout the course of this trying season, he fought onwards and in good spirits. Indeed, he has grown more expressive on the court -- just look at his adorable shimmying of his fists at the conclusion of today's match (near the end of the clip, too cute!) -- just in case any of us doubted, for an instant, that he still loves this game.
It is entirely possible that idolising an athlete is rather passé -- perhaps it would be more fitting for me to stick to historical and political figures, who are easier to defend on a more intellectual level, I think, but to hell with abstract ideas of grandeur and excellence. There is something deeply human that I found while watching Roger Federer play this season and hoisting the spoils of his singular victory at the majors at the end of it all. It is best summarised by some generically uplifting quotation out there that expresses something like this: the true mettle of our character is revealed only when we are at our most humble, our most defeated, and though our burdens be irresistibly heavy, we do not shy from challenge. We struggle onward, and, when beaten, we struggle again until the task that has been set before us is complete.
Signing off, V.M. Bell