People, Pixels And A Player
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By TW Contributing Editor Andrew Burton (photo credit: Sam)
Morning, all.
We're at the middle Sunday of Wimbledon. As this post goes up, Pete is on his way to England for the second week of the tournament.
Three weeks ago, Pete asked me to start thinking about writing an appreciation of Roger Federer, in the event that Federer should finally land the French Open title that was still, then, tantalizingly just out of reach. So here we are.
Appreciations of a player typically follow one of a few well known structures. First, there's the match description. The wonderful shots by the victor, the plucky-but-ultimately-doomed efforts of the loser. The more plucky the loser, the more wonderful the victor, the better the story.
Then there's the "hero's journey" story - the narrative of the Quest undertaken by the Player to achieve his Holy Grail. This one's pretty easy to write - Holy Grail = French Open, the missing major on the resume, the 14th title, the GOAT status. And there's some special spice - had Federer won his first RG final against Nadal in 2006, it would have been a pretty boring hero's story - eight of eight GS finals won, gosh he's so perfect, barely suppressed yawn. Whereas now we have Return Of The King, the man who's been tested and emerged stronger, he was written off but look at him now, yup, the words just flow off the keyboard.
Another theme might be "Roger And Me." I wasn't in Paris for Federer's matches, as Rosangel memorably was last year for Wimbledon F 2008. Still, I was manning a keyboard throughout the tournament, so maybe that counts. And there might be a post in the tale of matches watched at odd hours in the morning, of pilgrimages to tournaments, of the way the player has Changed My Life. Still, I have a feeling that's also been done, and you've probably had it up to here with sports crushes, or religious experiences.
I thought I'd try a different tack. Pete's blog has become a gathering place - a community, a Tribe. As Federer got nearer the final, the tension and anticipation among his fans (including me) grew, until Sunday's catharsis. This has become a shared experience, something which wasn't possible even ten years ago. Match calling can link a fan in the Philippines with a friend in Canada, Portugal or India. So I reached out to some of the people I knew in two online communities - TennisWorld and RF.com - to learn how others were enjoying the moment, and what Federer's victory at Roland Garros meant to them.
First up - guess the poster:
I think that "unfreakingbelievable" is a hint: I just hope the author didn't take her hands off the wheel of the bus while texting.
Last summer, I had the pleasure of meeting **Sher **and her mother at Toronto, as we prepared for Federer's opening match of the tournament. Sadly, it was Federer's last match: an imperious 6-2 first set against Gilles "oh Death, where is thy sting" Simon was followed by a baffling loss of concentration, then an outright collapse (from two, count 'em, two separate break leads in the third set). Sher and I commiserated with each other then: after Federer's victory in Paris, she wrote
Matt Zemek brought a sportswriter's eye to the event:
Nearly everyone watching the tournament felt the earth shake on the middle Sunday. Many of us, watching from continents away, wondered how the aftershocks would affect the newly installed favorite. CL expresses this beautifully, and connects her emotions in those days to earlier sporting memories:
As I wrote above, another tennis community was also celebrating - the place TW calls the Mothership. One of RF.com's regulars, Sameena, told me
For krist, one of the pillars of RF.com, there was a sense of deliverance:
**Tangerine Popsicle **also talks about Federer's fighting spirit - something that many of his fans worried had gone AWOL at the start of this year. She also beautifully describes the emotions that many of us felt in the final few days of the tournament - wanting to know how it all ends, knowing that we'd have to wait and find out....
For my own part, I've been honestly surprised by how, three weeks on, the 2009 French Open seems like it happened a year ago. The show goes on.
For a week or so, I anticipated great happiness, I felt it, held onto it for a little while, and have now put it into memory. What makes the memory richer is the connection I felt during the tournament, match calling, analyzing, hoping, frazzling, calming, then just letting it all out, with all the friends mentioned in this post, and the many, many others in the comments threads at TW, RF.com and on numerous other tennis sites around the world. At one level it's just pixels on a screen, but at another it's what we all reach for but don't always find - human connection in our happiest moments.