By Cheryl Jones
Going home is often anticipated by sorting through a good many emotions. Many of the memories are comforting, others not so much. Saturday afternoon was an affirmation of the shear comfort that Roger Federer must have brought with him when he took the court in Gerry Weber Stadion facing a young Russian by the name of Karen Khachenov in yet another semi-final match where he has so often been propelled into the final. It’s kind of like his home away from home.
The GWO is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, and more than half of those years have seen Federer in play on the final day of the tournament. Thirteen times Federer has been able to move forward to vie for yet another championship. It seems as if he could call this place home. Halle has been a haven of positivity for the Swiss maestro. He has been the champ here eight times. The tournament has always won, too. A few years ago, the Weber’s signed the superlative player to a “lifetime” contract that guarantees he will play here until he retires from the game.
His match with the youthful Russian opened play on Saturday. It began a bit after one in the afternoon and it wasn’t exactly a decisive win, but a win nonetheless. It must have been gratifying, for the former champ. It was a 6-4, 7-6 contest that was settled with a tiebreak in the second set, leading to a nearly audible collective sigh of relief by fans and the GWO sponsors alike.
After the match, he spoke with the media, and said, “I mean anything is good as long as I win today and get a chance to be in the final because you don’t want to lose in the semis and have ‘sort’ of a great run and then not get a chance at the title.” He earned that opportunity with some great tennis and really some of the mediocre type, when he did his dance before a before a packed house that absolutely adores him, and he’s not even German. (The GWO is in Westfalia, Germany where Volkswagon Buses often began their long lives cruising the highways everywhere in the world.)
Because Khachanov just turned twenty-one in May, he has spent most of his tennis life looking up to Federer who will be thirty-six in a bit over a month. (That looking up metaphor is somewhat of a misnomer because the Russian player is stocky and 6’6” tall and Federer is a svelte 6’1”, but when the GWO first welcomed the Swiss man, Khachenov wasn’t yet attending elementary school.) Fortunately, tennis isn’t basketball or even American football and in reality, size doesn’t matter much.
There was a real give and take on the court today. Federer took hold of the first set after a service break in the fourth game, where he went on to play steady tennis to make it 6-4 in his favor for that first set. Having watched “Federer tennis” for most of his long and illustrious career, there may be a glitch in his game these days, but then again, maybe not. Many of his shots seemed to be more of – just get the ball back over the net selections, which is rather like I play – instead of the carefully planned returns that could be recalled from his more youthful career, when nearly all of his shots were like magic. It almost always looked as if he was hitting the proper mark in order to encourage the ball to give him a sure winner in the long run.
Khachanov is now ranked thirty-eighth in the world. It’s the highest he’s ever been and reaching the semifinals in Halle should elevate the ranking a bit higher still. He was knocked out of Roland Garros by a determined number one in the ATP rankings, Andy Murray, in the Round of 16. (It seemed then that a bit of honing could produce a seriously competitive game when I watched two of Khachanov’s early round matches in Paris.)
Many people have compared his game to Marat Safin’s because of his size and playing style. If that were the case, it would seem that he is a bigger and more refined version of the wisecracking Russian star who once purposely pulled his tennis shorts down – on court – to reveal his tighty-whiteys. There was none of that today. The match was one hundred percent tennis; no theatrics; no broken racquets; no need to be a lip-reader of naughty words – just world-class tennis.
Most everyone agrees that the classiest of tennis players in today’s game is Roger Federer. He has always earned the respect of his peers, fans and journalists alike. It isn’t all about tennis for him. He has a family and because he seems to have performed everything in a big way, he even fathered children two-by-two. He is Dad to two boys and two girls. The elder twins are daughters who will be eight years old in July. His sons turned three in May. Lest one believe that he is merely busy with his family and tennis, there is more. He is one of the most admired men in the world. The Roger Federer Foundation was formed in 2003. It focuses on supporting community driven initiatives to increase the quality of education in South Africa and Switzerland and the foundation has invested more than twenty-eight million dollars since its inception.
Today wasn’t just about Roger Federer or Karen Khachanov. There was another semifinal match. That one saw a young German, Alexander Zverev defeat Frenchman, Richard Gasquet, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. The twenty-year-old Zverev has a very good chance to thwart Federer’s quest for another championship in Halle.
Reflecting on his own career, Federer recalled it as a ride “big new wave coming in” with the likes of Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. Tomorrow could be an example of yet another set of waves that may continue on for Federer, or be strong enough to carry the lanky young German, Zverev closer to the perfect wave and a victory at the Gerry Weber Open.
