That match would have been a classic for sure. Or that set, the last game.
It’s Andy Murray going forward and Alex de Minaur pulling him back, a couple of times it’s the other way around. The deciding game of the first set lasted fifteen minutes. A backspinning forehand met de Miner’s racket, Murray was fooled for the ultimate. After falling behind and winning the match, de Miner’s voice is the lion’s roar. On any other night, these scenes would have seemed magical, but on this night, it was all the rage. Who asked them to fight a classical fight today!
Today the stage is not set for all these, the eyes of a world have not lost sleep; It was not necessary to think twice to push the next day’s very important exam beyond the danger limit, many others including you did not keep their eyes on the TV screen saying ‘Let’s go to the office tomorrow at eight o’clock’.
For which Tamam vowed to renounce the world, a couple of weeks before Mahamaya Puja, he came to the court accompanied by many warring opponents when, at 9:50 London time. If you put your eyes and ears on the TV screen, you can clearly hear that this is the Swiss maestro, who came to the court as an athlete and returned as an artist.
This is Roger Federer, you know. He also knows that a professional career that began with the dream of buying ‘more and more CDs’ ended 24 years later at London’s Otu Arena. Age or knee surgery, whatever the reason, never seemed to run at full speed in the two-hour match. The match did not follow the genre of fairy tales. He won 82 percent of his career matches, losing his last competitive match in two sets 4–6, 7–6 in an 11–9 tiebreaker.
Of course, who is going to remember the scoreline of those numbers tonight? Who remembers that the rest of the world has settled with Europe in this year’s Laver Cup by winning this match? Not even a corner of the packed gallery’s cheers was reserved for Jack Sock and Francis Tiefo this night. Rather, the power was reserved for the legend who, unnoticed by all, played a crosscourt forehand or an eye-popping backhand, one last time.
Of course, he did not return to the court after almost a year and a half in the best rhythm, but even on this night, those magical moments were rightly seen. Like this, the impression of great reflexes was mixed with the first winner. The familiar forehand was seen again in the set-deciding game. The shot that tapped the hippocampus brought out the moment in the 2005 US Open final. A similar forehand against Andre Agassi stunned him and the world.
In the first set, a ball went out through a very delicate gap in the net. Federer certainly didn’t imagine such a thing, but why should Novak Djokovic’s enthralled eyes on the bench stop him? How does the commentator miss this opportunity to sing praises? He said, ‘In 24 years, Federer has shown many things, it seems that only this trick was left to show.’
The most desired of the night, however, was the ace that came out of his racket. His serve changes direction in the air and the ball crosses the baseline without giving the opponent a chance. The opportunity came last night as well. But he could not color the occasion even once. ‘There is no such thing as a staged script, you have to find your own way’ , the commentator reminds us of that constant truth at that moment.
It’s really that shallow emotion too. During the match, his smiling face has been caught again and again, the pictures of Rafael Nadal next to him seem to be worth millions now. After the end of the match, however, he could no longer continue the smiling performance. The stone of sadness that was heavy in the chest melted in the water of the fountain. People call him crying.
It is supposed to be able to see straight from him, everyone’s eyes are sly. Djokovic tried to hide it, Nadal had no such desire. The two have faced each other on the court 40 times, with Nadal drowning in the sea of sadness and Federer returning home with the big trophy, 16 times. The logic goes, without The Mighty Federer, the Spanish matador’s trophies would have been a bit higher, the bank balance would have swelled even more. Nadal could have thought, ‘Let’s go, finally goodbye.
But the fact that a sea of incomprehensibility rolled over Nadal’s cheeks without any of these, which was infected faster than the incomprehensible epidemic, proved that Nadal is actually a part of that generation. That’s why he said in an interview after the match, “Something bigger than my life will go away with Federer.”
The generation, who dreamed of never seeing such a night ‘one day or another’.