WIMBLEDON 2019

Good piece, the para laying out all the stats from the match is pretty heartbreaking. I think the gap in it though is to ask where has Fed's ability to close out slams, after winning 20 of them, gone. Fed has always had that adulation from crowds and has coped perfectly well before.

and maybe what's missing is the thing you can do only when younger -- i.e. you can play as many matches, win the smaller titles, as a way of preparing for the bigger ones. Then again Novak is ridiculous on the big points too.

Since he last won a Slam (which was only 18 months ago), Fed has... lost from two sets and MP up vs Anderson, lost a tight four-setter under lights in insane humidity vs Millman, lost a tight four-setter in which he missed dozens of break-points vs Tsitsipas, and been thumped in straights (in which he actually played fleetingly well) on clay by Rafa. And then yesterday. Four of those five Slam exits seem like "old man loses edge" but I think the Federer of 2013 would have lost all of those matches too, maybe not even competitively. Meanwhile, he's sailing through most other rounds and continuing to win at 1000/500/250 level. I think the reduction of schedule (and Edberg's 2014-15 retooling of his game, the new racket, etc) is giving him chances he wouldn't have had at this age to go deep in these events.

And, what's more, he hasn't even played a light schedule in 2019! 43 matches (47 if you count Hopman Cup) by the middle of July is maybe more than anyone else on the main tour. It's more than he played at this point at his peak in 2007.

At 8-7 40/15 all I could think about was those US Open semis. It had to be an another ace or nothing. Novak was going to find a way to get out of it. Fed net-rushing on that nothing FH at 40/30 was disastrous. Those BPs at 11-11 were Fed's last chance. Knew how the t-b would go.

The article above is very good - nails it pretty well.

I wonder if Roddick took a little sour delight in this. He outplayed Fed for long stretches in 2009, lost a couple of tie-breaks and eventually gave it up in a marathon fifth on a frame mis-hit. I guess that was a feature of Fed Slam finals in his 20-something pomp - he *always* won the breakers.

Thanks for the additional info - quite fascinating seeing all of these tight losses...and if he is doing that against Anderson then he will do it against Djoko.

That approach at 40/30 was...yeah, waking up in the middle of the night sweating and screaming stuff. How can you work yourself into that position and do this when you get to it? idk, and maybe nobody else does.

I'd say 18 months is a big-ish gap from winning one slam to another. In most individual sports when a 'great' starts winning the big ones they just stack 'em in batches. Seems like a habit that once broken is hard to get back on.

Gotta say I am not sure about Djoko hate as portrayed in that article. Novak is more hated than Nadal? If it wasn't for an injury or two Fed might have never won the French Open, surely a bigger crime than the tantrums and Grass-eating (The gimelstob affair is more recent, as grooveman says). Bringing in the Kyrgios tweet is funny but part of you is thinking the guy is sitting at home writing that shit instead of troubling anyone in the last stages of a slam.

Maybe there is something to anti-Eastern European (and Russian) bias. That little corner of the world is piling up slams across women and men's games. Maybe there is a correlation between the hate Novak gets and Lendl did? Novak has double the number of slams tho'.

eh insanely successful people who are also desperately needy are easy to dislike. not much more complicated than that. also the stupid number of ball bounces before serving that he did in the early bit of his career.

lendl was great and still wish he had a wimbledon rather than pat cash

No-one seriously thinks this about 'anti-Eastern Europe' bias, do they?

Goran was adored, late in his career at least. Safin hugely popular. Can't claim to be too well up on WTA crowd popularity, but I think Ivanovic, Jankovic and Azarenka were all pretty well liked? Halep and Pliskova are too.

To name but seven of the legion of popular Eastern European players over the years - especially in the women's game.

Personally, always rooted for Lendl, Mecir, Korda, Mandlikova, Myskina, Zvereva...

No-one seriously thinks this about 'anti-Eastern Europe' bias, do they?

― Orpheus Knutt (Tom D.), Monday, 15 July 2019 bookmarkflaglink

grooveman was saying it upthread. Then I thought of Lendl as a near analogue of someone who was very successful from that part of the world, and I remember reading something about how Lendl wasn't liked very much. But I wasn't around for him (or Navratilova)

Lendl was pretty dour, he was never going to be a crowd favourite, no matter where he came from

Lendl was my first favourite and while I was still young it was pretty clear he wasn't the one most people were rooting for/people though you should root for. I'd not go as far as to throw it down to anti-EEU bias, though I'm not into tennis deep enough to say anything about that.

Good read on the Ringer about Djokovic though.

Weirdly, Novak *was* a crowd favourite early in his career. He used to do a bit of a Tony Virgo and impersonate other players, was generally regarded as a "personality". I think he managed to trash a lot of goodwill in one on-court interview at Flushing Meadow after beating Roddick; Roddick had been poking fun in pressers re: ND's habit (back then, pre-GF diet*) of retiring from matches or citing injuries, and ND had a bit of a go back. Cue entirely predictable booing and I'm not sure his public persona ever quite recovered.

(* - he attributed his miraculous improvement in stamina 2010-11 to eliminating gluten from his diet, which is a small part of the general BS that seems to surround him).

He used to do a bit of a Tony Virgo

WHERE'S THAT SLICE BALL GOING

Actual LOL

when you say Tony Virgo you, of course, mean John Meo.

Gaaah! I knew it wasn't right when I posted it.

:D

This, from the Ringer, rings (npi) true most of all:

"This is, in essence, the whole tragedy of Djokovic. He arrived either a little too early or a little too late in the Federer-Nadal screenplay—too late to seem like an equal partner in the story, too early for the story to have ended without him—and as a result has always felt weirdly extraneous, even as he’s won 16 majors and been the best player in the world for most of the last 10 years."

Novak is more hated than Nadal?

Yes. There were as many "Vamos Rafa"s as there were "Come on Roger"s during their semi, but the final was a completely one-sided affair. Like Michael pointed out, Djokovic was much more loved by the public when he was just starting to win Slams - all those funny press conferences, the Sharapova impressions, the Djoker nickname. I guess that kind of thing just stopped being cute once he started really threatening the Roger-Rafa duopoly (The Ringer otm). Djokovic is not my fave for various reasons, but purely tennis-wise I'd prob still root for him over Rafa.

and re Federer: This is just my personal impression but I get the sense that since 2016, post-knee surgery and back problems, Fed has been treating his career basically like an extended farewell tour - happy to play on as long as he remains healthy, not putting pressure on himself, not sweating the small stuff. This has translated to breezing past the losses and not really doing anything to fix the late-stage mental lapses: like, even if he doesn't win, it's all good as long as he's still making semis and finals.

Yesterday was the first time in a very long time that I felt that he really, really wanted to win but couldn't, simply because he hadn't bothered to really look at himself and see how he's been reacting in these tight situations. And it's weird given how good he's been at analysing his own game in the past and fixing what needed to be fixed (adding the dropshot which he used to hate, coming in to the net more often, beefing up his backhand). Yesterday's loss was probably a good wake up call for him - it's no use having all the tools in his repertoire if he can't bring it during the most important moments in a match.

This, from the Ringer, rings (npi) true most of all:

"This is, in essence, the whole tragedy of Djokovic. He arrived either a little too early or a little too late in the Federer-Nadal screenplay—too late to seem like an equal partner in the story, too early for the story to have ended without him—and as a result has always felt weirdly extraneous, even as he’s won 16 majors and been the best player in the world for most of the last 10 years."
― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, July 15, 2019 8:58 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't follow tennis super duper closely but this feels correct. Honestly I think a lot of the anti-Djokovic sentiment is a function of everyone's love for Fed. Novak is a real threat now to surpass Fed's record for majors and I think the average fan doesn't want to see that happen. Kind of like a low-grade version of Bonds passing Aaron on the HR list (actually maybe a better example is Jimmie Johnson trying to overtake Earnhardt and Petty for NASCAR titles. there are probably other better examples I'm forgetting too).

Any examples that someone outside the US might understand?

well shit, I guess NASCAR isn't the global phenomenon I thought it was.

Federer singles record, since his return from injury at start of 2017 (incl Hopman and Laver Cups): 152-21 (87.9% W/L, 14 titles (18 if you include the SUI/Europe team titles)). Of those 21 defeats, 7 have been from match point up (Donskoy, Haas, Del Potro, Kokkinakis, Anderson, Thiem, Djokovic). You can probably throw another couple of squeakers in there (Djokovic, Paris Masters sf 2018, when he never lost serve; Thiem, Indian Wells f 2019, when he was coasting up a set + break). Maybe not counting the Slam exits vs Millman/Tsitsipas as they didn't go five (though Fed had a bunch of chances). OTOH, I think Fed has got out of jail maybe 12 times in this period (down mp vs Monfils, Kyrgios twice, tight matches vs Coric, Wawrinka, Berdych, that AO final vs Nadal, etc).

My suspicion is that, in the small subset of total matches which really go down to the wire, Novak is rather better than Fed's approx 12-9 recent record. Maybe not.