I have come to the point in my life where I am seeing a lot of my childhood sports idols retire or start to decline in their ability (at least ever so slightly). Over the next several days I am going to honor those athletes that I have admired growing up. Some I have admired for the way they play their sport and their passion, others I have admired for how they handle themselves through victory and defeats, while other may just be funny characters on and off their playing surface. These idols come from many various sports that I grew up watching.
Roger Federer:
I am going to start off, in no particular order, with Roger Federer because he is fresh in the mind after staying up late last night to watch his match with Andy Murray. Out of all the idols I will honor, he is probably the farthest one from retirement. He we probably still be playing for the next 3, maybe even 5, years. Picking Roger as an idol is interesting because I actually spent quite a few matches rooting against him when he would play Andy Roddick(hint, hint). I have been a huge Roger fan when he isn't playing Andy though.
One of the biggest rivalry's for me to watch in the last decade(outside the Civil War) would be the Federer vs Nadal matches. Unfortunately we were only able to see a few great matches between the two because of Nadal's dominance on clay and Federer dominance on hard court. We were able to see a couple classics at Wimbledon and one classic down under in Australian when Nadal was at his peak and finally stayed healthy on hard courts. I do wish to see at least one more Federer vs Nadal classic matchup(preferably not on clay), but we have two 25 year olds standing in the way of that right now, even when Nadal gets healthy.
As I watched Federer play last night, I could tell, for the first time, he was slower to get to balls he once got easily and his serving power was not what it once was. Federer has always made everything look so easy and it was that look of ease that you couldn't really see his heart and competitiveness, but we saw that last night. If it were a basketball game, Murray led from start to finish, but Federer didn't care what the score was or how fast the balls were coming back. He just grinded like crazy and gave himself a shot to win the match. Unfortunately, the win didn't come. Andy Murray has truly now arrived, more than ever, with his first Major win against Federer. Just another person Federer will have to beat out if he wants to get to the top again. I'm hoping for one or two more before he calls it quits. (3 more would give him 20, that sounds good?!)
The thing I love about Federer is his love for the sport. It's the reason he is still playing and will continue to play. Some players want to go out on top, leave before they decline. He doesn't care he just wants to play and keep playing his heart off for just another major and another. Others, especially in tennis, were forced to play at a young age by their parents and its no longer fun. Federer was good enough to play a lot of sports(soccer was the other main one), but he chose to play tennis because he loved it and continues to show that love for it.
I am not going to seat here and argue that Federer is the greatest athlete out there. The term "athlete" is so broad and can mean so many things. But I will argue that he is the most accomplished athlete of this generation and maybe all-time! 17 major titles. He made it to 17 of 18 finals in a 4.5 year span! That's crazy! That's consistent! 35 consecutive quarterfinals at majors and counting! The list goes on and on. I'm sure a lot of people would love to take their rival out of the equation, but think if Nadal weren't around- Look out! He would have 23 major titles and 2 calendar grand slams(the stat that eludes him). Unfortunately, Nadal was there to stop him on clay for many years, but the fans were also fortunate enough to see someone pushing Federer to be even better and we were blessed with that rivalry. Now we get to see all of the Big 4 battle it out for the next few years and I think we owe it to Federer who challenged all of them when they were coming up through the ranks to be even better.
Here's to The Great Roger Federer!
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