I was surprised, too, Bturner, to see this hostility. But you do see it a lot on this forum (I mean the whole forum), whenever a Slam event is over. Fans of the winner recall old fights they had with fans of other players, and now that they have the upper hand, they want to say how those other fans were wrong, or biased, or hypocritical. When Nadal wins his next Slam, his fans will show up in Federer's fans' faces with the same attitude.
Are you people purposely misinterpretating the point I'm trying to make?
I repeat once again, this has nothing to do with whether Hoodjem (or anyone else) thought Fed was gonna win another major or not, those who thought he wouldn't have, had perfectly valid reasons for believing so and were within a hair of being proven right about this Wimbledon as well given that as I said Fed could have easily lost in the 3d round to Julien.
I myself thought that Fed would never win another Wimbledon again and that #17 had the best chance of happening at USO (if it ever did happen) and I certainly never envisioned him getting back to #1 at this stage of his career.
My point was about Hoodjem's completely different attitude toward Fed depending on whether Fed is winning majors or not and nothing else, if you can't spot the difference that's fine but don't make this to be about something that it is not.
As a Federer fan, I was thrilled to see him win #17 and become #1 again (though I was simultaneously disappointed for Murray -- if you can't understand that, call me hypocritical if you wish). But I don't know, maybe I should take a cue from this thread and point some fingers at non-Federer fans.
I'm a longtime Fed fan but I would have been perfectly fine had Murray won the match because:
-Murray finally winning his first major in front of a home crowd with Lendl (who failed in his quest to capture Wimbledon) in his corner would have made up for a great tennis story.
-It would break the monotony of having 3 players win almost every major there is for nearly a decade, I prefer parity, as far as I'm concerned Murray (or Tsonga, or some young gun etc.) winning a major would have been good for the game.
However, I still see this as a step forward Murray because this time around he competed well, was playing aggressive and made his major final opponent earn it instead of freezing up mentally like he did in his other major finals.
