Reigning Wimbledon champion Roger Federer has been proclaimed as the greatest player of all time. The records of his celebrated forerunners, previously thought to be indestructible, have been eliminated and redrafted by the Magician.
The 19-time Major winner’s craftiness and poise synchronize rhythmically on a constant basis and with that we get to see the supreme racquet dexterity. In fact, a fans placard that they carry all over the world, wherever Roger is playing, aptly describes his talent, skill and approach – ‘Quiet please! genius at work’.
The Swiss has Federerized tennis fans with his dazzling performances ever since he broke onto the scene and everyone who has watched the World No. 2 in action has had the ‘Roger Moments’. It does not matter what the score-line is, if the effortless stroke-maker is on song then nothing is impossible on a tennis court. He can clobber winners from the most extreme positions and can put so much spin on the ball, that it is almost in-executable to catch it from that position.
To answer that one question – whether he is the best player to set foot on a tennis court, Ubitennis takes you inside the “Fedex Territory” to explain why the maestro is the “GOAT” (Greatest of all time). In this segment we analyze three factors that differentiate him from the rest and make him the preeminent champion of all time.
The Most Talented Player Ever
The first and the foremost reason behind picking Roger as the best player ever is, he simply is the most talented player who has ever graced a tennis court. As legendary coach Nick Bollettieri says: “What makes the difference with Federer is that he has a bit – actually one hell of a lot – of everything. He’s the all-round player. Add that to an intelligence and feel for the game and that’s the complete package.”
The Basel native has nearly everything in his weaponry to bamboozle his rivals – his cross-court and down the line forehand is the finest on the planet, and has the most fluent single-handed backhand in the sport. He is an artist at changing the pace and the direction of shots as he comes up with exquisite drop-shots, near perfect back-spinning and low-lying slices, coupled with well controlled lobs and smashes.
Additionally, his net rushing prowess that includes mastering the drive and the half-volley make him unbreakable at the net and it allows him to have a plan B in place whenever, his opponent on the other side is challenging him to the fore.
To get a deeper look at the wizardry of the Eternal Emperor, we have to take note of the celebrated novelist David Foster Wallace, who described one of the shots from his Wilson Wand from Wonderland. He illustrated: “It’s the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There’s a medium-long exchange of ground-strokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner…until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer’s scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi’s moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does.”
The essay titled ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience’ continued: “Federer’s still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there’s no time to turn his body around, and Agassi’s following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side…and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball’s past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi’s side, a winner — Federer’s still dancing backward as it lands.”
If that wasn’t enough three-time Wimbledon champ John McEnroe claimed that the 36-year-old is the most skillful player: “He’s the most gifted player that I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve seen a lot of people play. I’ve seen the Lavers, I played against some of the great players-the Samprases, Beckers, Connors, Borgs, you name it. We’re talking about the greatest player to ever step on the court. That, to me, says it all. He can beat half the guys with his eyes closed!”
The Most Complete Player Ever
Well, there is a cliché which says that numbers don’t lie and in Roger’s case they absolutely are not untruthful at all. The man from the richest nation in the world is the wealthiest as far as versatility is concerned. If, his slick movement is the topic of debate on the lush green grass, his wrist-position while executing those lovely drop-shots are under the radar of the experts at Paris. Even the angles he can come up with on the hard-courts are quite unique.
However, what makes him as an all-courter is his ability to win on any surface after all he has some of the most unprecedented feats on his resume. The former World No. 1 has reached 5 finals on the red dirt of Roland Garros, has been in the finals of all the Masters events on clay – Monte Carlo, Rome and Madrid and in total has lifted 11 crowns on clay. On the other hand, he is the holder of eight trophies at SW19 – the most by any player.
Apart from his 95 titles, the second most by any player in the open era, Federer has also won the most matches on the trot on the hard-courts and grass – 56 and 65 respectively, and is the only man who has tasted victory at least 65 times at all the four Grand Slams – he is 88/13 at Melbourne Park, 65/16 at the Paris Slam, 91/11 at Big W and 82/12 at Flushing Meadows.
To sum up, how efficient Roger has been, I would like to state Jimmy Conners, who said: “In an era of specialists, you’re either a clay court specialist, a grass court specialist, or a hard court specialist – or you’re Roger Federer.”
The Most Dominant Player Ever
When we talk about records from Roger’s racquet, then it would not be an exaggeration that the list is definitely endless. 36 quarterfinals in succession, 23 semis in a row, 29 finals and 19 titles – all at the Majors is a mark of the dominance Federer has had over his career. Moreover, Federer has no equal when it comes to being ranked No. 1. The Swiss superstar was at the pinnacle of the men’s game for a record of 237 consecutive weeks and in 2012, he went past Pistol Pete’s record for the most weeks at the helm. Actually, he became the first player ever to get past the 300-week mark at the top.
Sharing his views about how unbeatable Federer has been, Sampras remarked after Roger’s French Open triumph: “What he’s done over the past five years has never, ever been done – and probably will never, ever happen again. Now that he’s won in Paris, I think it just more solidifies his place in history as the greatest player that played the game, in my opinion. I’m a huge Laver fan and he had a few years in there where he didn’t have an opportunity to win majors. But you can’t compare the eras and in this era the competition is much more fierce than Rod’s.”
