To the over 40s, he is wistful evidence that grace and skill still have a place in the sun
Why do middle-aged spectators love Roger Federer? The answer to this question isn't 'duh'. This is a love that can't be explained by merely gesturing at his unprecedented achievement. Pete Sampras was the man who held all the records before Federer emerged - seven Wimbledontitles, 14 Grand Slam championships, the No. 1 ranking on the ATP computer for the most weeks ever - but while he was admired for his awesome serve, his killer smash, his all-round niceness, he wasn't loved.
Federer is adored by the over-40s. Take Vijay Amritraj. Amritraj is the best tennis commentator in the world: genial, funny, someone who understands the game, knows its great figures and has the great advantage of being a natural at the microphone. But put him in charge of commentary about a match that features Federer and he becomes an infatuated fan. There was a moment in Federer's match against Novak Djokovic where he was tucked up by a down-the-line shot, which forced him to improvise a high, cramped forehand that went over the sideline. Amritraj exclaimed (to no one's surprise) at Federer's quick hands; the fact that he had lost the point seemed beside the point.
He isn't alone in his adoration. The novelist, the late, great David Foster Wallace wrote an appreciation of Federer in the New York Times which makes Amritraj's enthusiasm seem judicious.
"Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws... a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to...in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (i think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light."
So Wallace begins with the thesis that Federer is uber-human and escalates to the conclusion that he's probably divine. Amongst retired tennis greats, the sentiment in Federer's favour is overwhelming. Rod Laver thinks that hard though it is to compare tennis players across generations, Federer's probably the best of the Open era. Sampras declares that there's no one he'd rather lose his records to and Sampras's great rival, Andre Agassi, manages to diss Nadal and praise Federer in a single sentence: "If it hadn't been for the freak from Mallorca, Federer would have won all the slams a few times."
The reference to Nadal is the key to understanding the middle-aged attachment to Federer. Nadal is the anti-Federer. Where Federer's signature style is cha-racterised by gliding effortlessness, Nadal's tennis is defined by explosive physicality. Nadal is a two-handed southpaw, Federer makes fans old enough to remember Ken Rosewall swoon with his flamboyant, single-handed backhand. If Federer is a two-legged Saluki, Nadal is a turbo-charged Rottweiler; ferocious, unremitting, inexhaustible. If Federer is Gatsby (and he has sometimes been parodically country club in his piped blazers and long flannels), Nadal is Popeye, his ham-like arms powered by some mysterious Mallorcan spinach.
Federer, despite being a tho-roughly modern tennis player in his athleticism, in the power and weight of his groundstrokes and his willingness to rally from the baseline, still manages to embody for the middle-aged a classicism that they believe is nearly extinct. So they ooh when he uses the backhand slice, sigh when he (occasionally) follows it in to the net to volley and become incontinent with delight when he scimitars that backhand down the line "on the dead run" as Amritraj loves to say.
Nadal, on the other hand, is the negation of this style. His groundstrokes are massively topspun on both flanks and his ability to retrieve and to counter-attack from extreme defensive positions is, as Agassi points out, freakish. Unlike Federer, most of Nadal's most fervent supporters are to be found amongst the young who feel no need to defer to classicism because it wasn't the dominant style when they began following tennis and secondly because they revel in Nadal's athleticism. Unlike the middle-aged they aren't invested in the defensive, compensatory old-person idea that grace and economy of effort and skill ought to prevail over unbridled strength and speed.
Nor do they see any virtue in Federer's unwillingness to adopt the latest racquet technology. Federer uses a smaller racquet head than most other players do on the men's tour, choosing to sacrifice power for feel. His racquet is also partly strung with natural gut unlike Nadal who was an early adopter of copoly strings, which grip the ball more firmly and make his topspun groundstrokes kick unplayably.
To the young, Federer often seems a preening has-been fighting a losing rearguard action against both youth and modernity. For the not-so-young his victories seem to offer a vindication of classicism's first principles and the illusion of continuity with the tennis of their youth. The power of classical forms is such that even Agassi, a creature of tennis's two-handed transformation, and Nick Bollettieri, the coaching Svengali who more than anyone promoted that transition, prefer Federer to Nadal, the great legatee of the changes they wrought.
As Federer, almost 31, enters his tennis dotage, his victory at Wimbledon and his unlikely return to the No. 1 ranking allows his greying groupies to believe that 'some work of noble note may yet be done', that 50 is, perhaps, the new 35.
The writer is an author, academic and critic.
