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Tennis lessons

Tennis lessons
The Indian Express
Posted online: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 at 2347 hrs IST

A few short weeks ago, Roger Federer lost a prize that he had held for 237 weeks, and most thought that he would only give up when he retired — ATP’s ranking as the world’s number one tennis player. Now, as the first major tournament since he lost that ranking gets interesting, and with it Federer’s last chance to salvage something of value from his annus horriblis, the world looks to Flushing Meadows in New York. The Olympics are spectacular; the football World Cup emotional; but for lessons in how to deal with invincibility, overconfidence and inexplicable failure, few sports are more transparent than tennis. This weekend, as Federer tried to explain how his new-found vulnerability would affect his playing, an international audience was forced to adjust, with him, from a unipolar to a bipolar world.

Federer is a once-in-a-generation player, a natural, the Bill Clinton (Charisma, crowd-puller abilities and not Lewinsky-type rapport) of tennis. A year ago, he might have been — no, was — considered unreachable. And yet, there is always someone younger and more determined, someone who might initially appear pedestrian and yet manages to lay sublime greatness low — a Nadal, an Obama . Federer will try to defend his US Open title by finally changing his game to reflect his mortality; just as Bill Clinton eventually settled into playing the senior statesman at last week’s Democratic convention, rather than the role of the main attraction he has always considered his own by right.

For us, in India, these questions might appear theoretical. Indians do not, as a rule, have to consider questions of greatness. India is accustomed to smaller pleasures, three-medal achievements, bottom-of-the-table accomplishments — in sport, and elsewhere. And yet, there is something that should be kept in mind this week: goals that appear unreachable, leads that appear unassailable, are destined to be reached, to be successfully assailed. To the young — and India is young — belongs the future, inevitably. How the adjustment is carried out will make all the difference.

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