6-8 Pages. 12 point font. MLA How is sport like religion? What are the key differences and similarities? Please use references using the attached articles with citations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&pagewanted=print 1/13

August 20, 2006

F e d e r e r a s R e l i g i o u s E x p e r i e n c e

By DAVID FOSTER W ALLACE

A lm ost anyone w ho loves tennis and follow s the m en’s tour on television has, over the last few

years, had w hat m ight be term ed Federer M om ents. T hese are tim es, as you w atch the young

Sw iss play, w hen the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are m ade that bring spouses in

from other room s to see if you’re O .K .

T he M om ents are m ore intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the im possibility

of w hat you just saw him do. W e’ve all got our exam ples. H ere is one. It’s the finals of the 2005

U .S. O pen, Federer serving to A ndre A gassi early in the fourth set. T here’s a m edium -long

exchange of groundstrokes, one w ith the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s pow er-baseline

gam e, Federer and A gassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the

baseline w inner...until suddenly A gassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls

Federer w ay out w ide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch

backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, w hich of course is the sort of thing A gassi

dines out on, and as Federer’s scram bling to reverse and get back to center, A gassi’s m oving in

to take the short ball on the rise, and he sm acks it hard right back into the sam e ad corner,

trying to w rong-foot Federer, w hich in fact he does — Federer’s still near the corner but

running tow ard the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now , w here he just

w as, and there’s no tim e to turn his body around, and A gassi’s follow ing the shot in to the net at

an angle from the backhand side...and w hat Federer now does is som ehow instantly reverse

thrust and sort of skip backw ard three or four steps, im possibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his

backhand corner, all his w eight m oving backw ard, and the forehand is a topspin scream er dow n

the line past A gassi at net, w ho lunges for it but the ball’s past him , and it flies straight dow n the

sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of A gassi’s side, a w inner — Federer’s still dancing

backw ard as it lands. A nd there’s that fam iliar little second of shocked silence from the N ew

Y ork crow d before it erupts, and John M cEnroe w ith his color m an’s headset on T V says

(m ostly to him self, it sounds like), “H ow do you hit a w inner from that position?” A nd he’s right:

given A gassi’s position and w orld-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball dow n a tw o-

inch pipe of space in order to pass him , w hich he did, m oving backw ards, w ith no setup tim e and

none of his w eight behind the shot. It w as im possible. It w as like som ething out of “T he

M atrix.” I don’t know w hat-all sounds w ere involved, but m y spouse says she hurried in and

there w as popcorn all over the couch and I w as dow n on one knee and m y eyeballs looked like

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A nyw ay, that’s one exam ple of a Federer M om ent, and that w as m erely on T V — and the truth

is that T V tennis is to live tennis pretty m uch as video porn is to the felt reality of hum an love.

Jou rn alistically sp eakin g, there is no hot new s to offer you about R oger Federer. H e is, at

25, the best tennis player currently alive. M aybe the best ever. Bios and profiles abound. “60

M inutes” did a feature on him just last year. A nything you w ant to know about M r. R oger

N .M .I. Federer — his background, his hom e tow n of Basel, Sw itzerland, his parents’ sane and

unexploitative support of his talent, his junior tennis career, his early problem s w ith fragility

and tem per, his beloved junior coach, how that coach’s accidental death in 2002 both shattered

and annealed Federer and helped m ake him w hat he now is, Federer’s 39 career singles titles,

his eight G rand Slam s, his unusually steady and m ature com m itm ent to the girlfriend w ho

travels w ith him (w hich on the m en’s tour is rare) and handles his affairs (w hich on the m en’s

tour is unheard of), his old-school stoicism and m ental toughness and good sportsm anship and

evident overall decency and thoughtfulness and charitable largess — it’s all just a G oogle search

aw ay. K nock yourself out.

T his present article is m ore about a spectator’s experience of Federer, and its context. T he

specific thesis here is that if you’ve never seen the young m an play live, and then do, in person,

on the sacred grass of W im bledon, through the literally w ithering heat and then w ind and rain

of the ’06 fortnight, then you are apt to have w hat one of the tournam ent’s press bus drivers

describes as a “bloody near-religious experience.” It m ay be tem pting, at first, to hear a phrase

like this as just one m ore of the overheated tropes that people resort to to describe the feeling

of Federer M om ents. But the driver’s phrase turns out to be true — literally, for an instant

ecstatically — though it takes som e tim e and serious w atching to see this truth em erge.

B eau ty is n ot th e goal of com petitive sports, but high-level sports are a prim e venue for the

expression of hum an beauty. T he relation is roughly that of courage to w ar.

T he hum an beauty w e’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it m ight be called

kinetic beauty. Its pow er and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do w ith sex or cultural

norm s. W hat it seem s to have to do w ith, really, is hum an beings’ reconciliation w ith the fact of

having a body.(1)

O f course, in m en’s sports no one ever talks about beauty or grace or the body. M en m ay

profess their “love” of sports, but that love m ust alw ays be cast and enacted in the sym bology

of w ar: elim ination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive statistics, technical

analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniform s, m ass noise, banners, chest-thum ping, face-

painting, etc. For reasons that are not w ell understood, w ar’s codes are safer for m ost of us than

love’s. Y ou too m ay find them so, in w hich case Spain’s m esom orphic and totally m artial R afael 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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N adal is the m an’s m an for you — he of the unsleeved biceps and K abuki self-exhortations. Plus

N adal is also Federer’s nem esis and the big surprise of this year’s W im bledon, since he’s a clay-

court specialist and no one expected him to m ake it past the first few rounds here. W hereas

Federer, through the sem ifinals, has provided no surprise or com petitive dram a at all. H e’s

outplayed each opponent so com pletely that the T V and print press are w orried his m atches are

dull and can’t com pete effectively w ith the nationalist fervor of the W orld Cup.(2)

Ju ly 9’s m en ’s fin al, though, is everyone’s dream . N adal vs. Federer is a replay of last

m onth’s French O pen final, w hich N adal w on. Federer has so far lost only four m atches all year,

but they’ve all been to N adal. Still, m ost of these m atches have been on slow clay, N adal’s best

surface. G rass is Federer’s best. O n the other hand, the first w eek’s heat has baked out som e of

the W im bledon courts’ slickness and m ade them slow er. T here’s also the fact that N adal has

adjusted his clay-based gam e to grass — m oving in closer to the baseline on his groundstrokes,

am ping up his serve, overcom ing his allergy to the net. H e just about disem bow eled A gassi in

the third round. T he netw orks are in ecstasies. Before the m atch, on Centre Court, behind the

glass slits above the south backstop, as the linesm en are com ing out on court in their new R alph

Lauren uniform s that look so m uch like children’s navalw ear, the broadcast com m entators can

be seen practically bouncing up and dow n in their chairs. T his W im bledon final’s got the

revenge narrative, the king-versus-regicide dynam ic, the stark character contrasts. It’s the

passionate m achism o of southern Europe versus the intricate clinical artistry of the north.

A pollo and D ionysus. Scalpel and cleaver. R ighty and southpaw . N os. 1 and 2 in the w orld.

N adal, the m an w ho’s taken the m odern pow er-baseline gam e just as far as it goes, versus a

m an w ho’s transfigured that m odern gam e, w hose precision and variety are as big a deal as his

pace and foot-speed, but w ho m ay be peculiarly vulnerable to, or psyched out by, that first

m an. A British sportsw riter, exulting w ith his m ates in the press section, says, tw ice, “It’s going

to be a w ar.”

Plus it’s in the cathedral of Centre Court. A nd the m en’s final is alw ays on the fortnight’s second

Sunday, the sym bolism of w hich W im bledon em phasizes by alw ays om itting play on the first

Sunday. A nd the spattery gale that has knocked over parking signs and everted um brellas all

m orning suddenly quits an hour before m atch tim e, the sun em erging just as Centre Court’s

tarp is rolled back and the net posts driven hom e.

Federer and N adal com e out to applause, m ake their ritual bow s to the nobles’ box. T he Sw iss is

in the butterm ilk-colored sport coat that N ike’s gotten him to w ear for W im bledon this year. O n

Federer, and perhaps on him alone, it doesn’t look absurd w ith shorts and sneakers. T he

Spaniard eschew s all w arm -up clothing, so you have to look at his m uscles right aw ay. H e and

the Sw iss are both in all-N ike, up to the very sam e kind of tied w hite N ike hankie w ith the

M ORE ON THE HOM E PAGE

2 4 5 D e a d a n d 2 0 0 M issin g in

T u rk ish M in e D isa ste r

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sw oosh positioned above the third eye. N adal tucks his hair under his hankie, but Federer

doesn’t, and sm oothing and fussing w ith the bits of hair that fall over the hankie is the m ain

Federer tic T V view ers get to see; likew ise N adal’s obsessive retreat to the ballboy’s tow el

betw een points. T here happen to be other tics and habits, though, tiny perks of live view ing.

T here’s the great care R oger Federer takes to hang the sport coat over his spare courtside

chair’s back, just so, to keep it from w rinkling — he’s done this before each m atch here, and

som ething about it seem s childlike and w eirdly sw eet. O r the w ay he inevitably changes out his

racket som etim e in the second set, the new one alw ays in the sam e clear plastic bag closed w ith

blue tape, w hich he takes off carefully and alw ays hands to a ballboy to dispose of. T here’s

N adal’s habit of constantly picking his long shorts out of his bottom as he bounces the ball

before serving, his w ay of alw ays cutting his eyes w arily from side to side as he w alks the

baseline, like a convict expecting to be shanked. A nd som ething odd on the Sw iss’s serve, if you

look very closely. H olding ball and racket out in front, just before starting the m otion, Federer

alw ays places the ball precisely in the V -shaped gap of the racket’s throat, just below the head,

just for an instant. If the fit isn’t perfect, he adjusts the ball until it is. It happens very fast, but

also every tim e, on both first serves and second.

N adal and Federer now w arm each other up for precisely five m inutes; the um pire keeps tim e.

T here’s a very definite order and etiquette to these pro w arm -ups, w hich is som ething that

television has decided you’re not interested in seeing. Centre Court holds 13,000 and change.

A nother several thousand have done w hat people here do w illingly every year, w hich is to pay a

stiff general adm ission at the gate and then gather, w ith ham pers and m osquito spray, to w atch

the m atch on an enorm ous T V screen outside Court 1. Y our guess here is probably as good as

anyone’s.

R ight before play, up at the net, there’s a cerem onial coin-toss to see w ho’ll serve first. It’s

another W im bledon ritual. T he honorary coin-tosser this year is W illiam Caines, assisted by the

um pire and tournam ent referee. W illiam Caines is a 7-year-old from K ent w ho contracted liver

cancer at age 2 and som ehow survived after surgery and horrific chem o. H e’s here representing

Cancer R esearch U K . H e’s blond and pink-cheeked and com es up to about Federer’s w aist. T he

crow d roars its approval of the re-enacted toss. Federer sm iles distantly the w hole tim e. N adal,

just across the net, keeps dancing in place like a boxer, sw inging his arm s from side to side. I’m

not sure w hether the U .S. netw orks show the coin-toss or not, w hether this cerem ony’s part of

their contractual obligation or w hether they get to cut to com m ercial. A s W illiam ’s ushered off,

there’s m ore cheering, but it’s scattered and disorganized; m ost of the crow d can’t quite tell

w hat to do. It’s like once the ritual’s over, the reality of w hy this child w as part of it sinks in.

T here’s a feeling of som ething im portant, som ething both uncom fortable and not, about a child

w ith cancer tossing this dream -final’s coin. T he feeling, w hat-all it m ight m ean, has a tip-of-the- 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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tongue-type quality that rem ains elusive for at least the first tw o sets.(3)

A top ath lete’s beau ty is next to im possible to describe directly. O r to evoke. Federer’s

forehand is a great liquid w hip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load w ith

topspin, or slice — the slice w ith such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the

grass to m aybe ankle height. H is serve has w orld-class pace and a degree of placem ent and

variety no one else com es close to; the service m otion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive (on

T V ) only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the m om ent of im pact. H is anticipation and court

sense are otherw orldly, and his footw ork is the best in the gam e — as a child, he w as also a

soccer prodigy. A ll this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the

experience of w atching this m an play. O f w itnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his

gam e. Y ou m ore have to com e at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as A quinas

did w ith his ow n ineffable subject — to try to define it in term s of w hat it is not.

O ne thing it is not is televisable. A t least not entirely. T V tennis has its advantages, but these

advantages have disadvantages, and chief am ong them is a certain illusion of intim acy.

T elevision’s slow -m o replays, its close-ups and graphics, all so privilege view ers that w e’re not

even aw are of how m uch is lost in broadcast. A nd a large part of w hat’s lost is the sheer

physicality of top tennis, a sense of the speeds at w hich the ball is m oving and the players are

reacting. T his loss is sim ple to explain. T V ’s priority, during a point, is coverage of the w hole

court, a com prehensive view , so that view ers can see both players and the overall geom etry of

the exchange. T elevision therefore chooses a specular vantage that is overhead and behind one

baseline. Y ou, the view er, are above and looking dow n from behind the court. T his perspective,

as any art student w ill tell you, “foreshortens” the court. R eal tennis, after all, is three-

dim ensional, but a T V screen’s im age is only 2-D . T he dim ension that’s lost (or rather

distorted) on the screen is the real court’s length, the 78 feet betw een baselines; and the speed

w ith w hich the ball traverses this length is a shot’s pace, w hich on T V is obscured, and in person

is fearsom e to behold. T hat m ay sound abstract or overblow n, in w hich case by all m eans go in

person to som e professional tournam ent — especially to the outer courts in early rounds, w here

you can sit 20 feet from the sideline — and sam ple the difference for yourself. If you’ve w atched

tennis only on television, you sim ply have no idea how hard these pros are hitting the ball, how

fast the ball is m oving,(4) how little tim e the players have to get to it, and how quickly they’re

able to m ove and rotate and strike and recover. A nd none are faster, or m ore deceptively

effortless about it, than R oger Federer.

Interestingly, w hat is less obscured in T V coverage is Federer’s intelligence, since this

intelligence often m anifests as angle. Federer is able to see, or create, gaps and angles for

w inners that no one else can envision, and television’s perspective is perfect for view ing and 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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review ing these Federer M om ents. W hat’s harder to appreciate on T V is that these

spectacular-looking angles and w inners are not com ing from now here — they’re often set up

several shots ahead, and depend as m uch on Federer’s m anipulation of opponents’ positions as

they do on the pace or placem ent of the coup de grâce. A nd understanding how and w hy

Federer is able to m ove other w orld-class athletes around this w ay requires, in turn, a better

technical understanding of the m odern pow er-baseline gam e than T V — again — is set up to

provide.

W im bled on is stran ge. V erily it is the gam e’s M ecca, the cathedral of tennis; but it w ould be

easier to sustain the appropriate level of on-site veneration if the tournam ent w eren’t so intent

on rem inding you over and over that it’s the cathedral of tennis. T here’s a peculiar m ix of

stodgy self-satisfaction and relentless self-prom otion and -branding. It’s a bit like the sort of

authority figure w hose office w all has every last plaque, diplom a, and aw ard he’s ever gotten,

and every tim e you com e into the office you’re forced to look at the w all and say som ething to

indicate that you’re im pressed. W im bledon’s ow n w alls, along nearly every significant corridor

and passage, are lined w ith posters and signs featuring shots of past cham pions, lists of

W im bledon facts and trivia, historic lore, and so on. Som e of this stuff is interesting; som e is just

odd. T he W im bledon Law n T ennis M useum , for instance, has a collection of all the various kinds

of rackets used here through the decades, and one of the m any signs along the Level 2 passage

of the M illennium Building(5) prom otes this exhibition w ith both photos and didactic text, a kind

of H istory of the R acket. H ere, sic, is the clim actic end of this text:

T oday’s lightw eight fram es m ade of space-age m aterials like graphite, boron, titanium

and ceram ics, w ith larger heads — m id-size (90-95 square inches) and over-size (110

square inches) — have totally transform ed the character of the gam e. N ow adays it is the

pow erful hitters w ho dom inate w ith heavy topspin. Serve-and-volley players and those

w ho rely on subtlety and touch have virtually disappeared.

It seem s odd, to say the least, that such a diagnosis continues to hang here so prom inently in

the fourth year of Federer’s reign over W im bledon, since the Sw iss has brought to m en’s tennis

degrees of touch and subtlety unseen since (at least) the days of M cEnroe’s prim e. But the

sign’s really just a testam ent to the pow er of dogm a. For alm ost tw o decades, the party line’s

been that certain advances in racket technology, conditioning, and w eight training have

transform ed pro tennis from a gam e of quickness and finesse into one of athleticism and brute

pow er. A nd as an etiology of today’s pow er-baseline gam e, this party line is broadly accurate.

T oday’s pros truly are m easurably bigger, stronger, and better conditioned,(6) and high-tech

com posite rackets really have increased their capacities for pace and spin. H ow , then, som eone

of Federer’s consum m ate finesse has com e to dom inate the m en’s tour is a source of w ide and 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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dogm atic confusion.

T here are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. O ne kind involves

m ystery and m etaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. T he others are m ore

technical and m ake for better journalism .

T he m etaphysical explanation is that R oger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes

w ho appear to be exem pt, at least in part, from certain physical law s. G ood analogues here

include M ichael Jordan,(7) w ho could not only jum p inhum anly high but actually hang there a

beat or tw o longer than gravity allow s, and M uham m ad A li, w ho really could “float” across the

canvas and land tw o or three jabs in the clock-tim e required for one. T here are probably a half-

dozen other exam ples since 1960. A nd Federer is of this type — a type that one could call

genius, or m utant, or avatar. H e is never hurried or off-balance. T he approaching ball hangs, for

him , a split-second longer than it ought to. H is m ovem ents are lithe rather than athletic. Like

A li, Jordan, M aradona, and G retzky, he seem s both less and m ore substantial than the m en he

faces. Particularly in the all-w hite that W im bledon enjoys getting aw ay w ith still requiring, he

looks like w hat he m ay w ell (I think) be: a creature w hose body is both flesh and, som ehow ,

light.

T his thing about the ball cooperatively hanging there, slow ing dow n, as if susceptible to the

Sw iss’s w ill — there’s real m etaphysical truth here. A nd in the follow ing anecdote. A fter a July 7

sem ifinal in w hich Federer destroyed Jonas Bjorkm an — not just beat him , destroyed him —

and just before a requisite post-m atch new s conference in w hich Bjorkm an, w ho’s friendly w ith

Federer, says he w as pleased to “have the best seat in the house” to w atch the Sw iss “play the

nearest to perfection you can play tennis,” Federer and Bjorkm an are chatting and joking

around, and Bjorkm an asks him just how unnaturally big the ball w as looking to him out there,

and Federer confirm s that it w as “like a bow ling ball or basketball.” H e m eans it just as a

bantery, m odest w ay to m ake Bjorkm an feel better, to confirm that he’s surprised by how

unusually w ell he played today; but he’s also revealing som ething about w hat tennis is like for

him . Im agine that you’re a person w ith preternaturally good reflexes and coordination and

speed, and that you’re playing high-level tennis. Y our experience, in play, w ill not be that you

possess phenom enal reflexes and speed; rather, it w ill seem to you that the tennis ball is quite

large and slow -m oving, and that you alw ays have plenty of tim e to hit it. T hat is, you w on’t

experience anything like the (em pirically real) quickness and skill that the live audience,

w atching tennis balls m ove so fast they hiss and blur, w ill attribute to you.(8)

V elocity’s just one part of it. N ow w e’re getting technical. T ennis is often called a “gam e of

inches,” but the cliché is m ostly referring to w here a shot lands. In term s of a player’s hitting an

incom ing ball, tennis is actually m ore a gam e of m icrom eters: vanishingly tiny changes around 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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the m om ent of im pact w ill have large effects on how and w here the ball travels. T he sam e

principle explains w hy even the sm allest im precision in aim ing a rifle w ill still cause a m iss if the

target’s far enough aw ay.

By w ay of illustration, let’s slow things w ay dow n. Im agine that you, a tennis player, are

standing just behind your deuce corner’s baseline. A ball is served to your forehand — you pivot

(or rotate) so that your side is to the ball’s incom ing path and start to take your racket back for

the forehand return. K eep visualizing up to w here you’re about halfw ay into the stroke’s

forw ard m otion; the incom ing ball is now just off your front hip, m aybe six inches from point of

im pact. Consider som e of the variables involved here. O n the vertical plane, angling your racket

face just a couple degrees forw ard or back w ill create topspin or slice, respectively; keeping it

perpendicular w ill produce a flat, spinless drive. H orizontally, adjusting the racket face ever so

slightly to the left or right, and hitting the ball m aybe a m illisecond early or late, w ill result in a

cross-court versus dow n-the-line return. Further slight changes in the curves of your

groundstroke’s m otion and follow -through w ill help determ ine how high your return passes

over the net, w hich, together w ith the speed at w hich you’re sw inging (along w ith certain

characteristics of the spin you im part), w ill affect how deep or shallow in the opponent’s court

your return lands, how high it bounces, etc. T hese are just the broadest distinctions, of course —

like, there’s heavy topspin vs. light topspin, or sharply cross-court vs. only slightly cross-court,

etc. T here are also the issues of how close you’re allow ing the ball to get to your body, w hat grip

you’re using, the extent to w hich your knees are bent and/or w eight’s m oving forw ard, and

w hether you’re able sim ultaneously to w atch the ball and to see w hat your opponent’s doing

after he serves. T hese all m atter, too. Plus there’s the fact that you’re not putting a static object

into m otion here but rather reversing the flight and (to a varying extent) spin of a projectile

com ing tow ard you — com ing, in the case of pro tennis, at speeds that m ake conscious thought

im possible. M ario A ncic’s first serve, for instance, often com es in around 130 m .p.h. Since it’s 78

feet from A ncic’s baseline to yours, that m eans it takes 0.41 seconds for his serve to reach you.

(9) T his is less than the tim e it takes to blink quickly, tw ice.

T he upshot is that pro tennis involves intervals of tim e too brief for deliberate action.

T em porally, w e’re m ore in the operative range of reflexes, purely physical reactions that

bypass conscious thought. A nd yet an effective return of serve depends on a large set of

decisions and physical adjustm ents that are a w hole lot m ore involved and intentional than

blinking, jum ping w hen startled, etc.

Successfully returning a hard-served tennis ball requires w hat’s som etim es called “the

kinesthetic sense,” m eaning the ability to control the body and its artificial extensions through

com plex and very quick system s of tasks. English has a w hole cloud of term s for various parts 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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of this ability: feel, touch, form , proprioception, coordination, hand-eye coordination,

kinesthesia, grace, control, reflexes, and so on. For prom ising junior players, refining the

kinesthetic sense is the m ain goal of the extrem e daily practice regim ens w e often hear about.

(10) T he training here is both m uscular and neurological. H itting thousands of strokes, day after

day, develops the ability to do by “feel” w hat cannot be done by regular conscious thought.

R epetitive practice like this often looks tedious or even cruel to an outsider, but the outsider

can’t feel w hat’s going on inside the player — tiny adjustm ents, over and over, and a sense of

each change’s effects that gets m ore and m ore acute even as it recedes from norm al

consciousness.(11)

T he tim e and discipline required for serious kinesthetic training are one reason w hy top pros

are usually people w ho’ve devoted m ost of their w aking lives to tennis, starting (at the very

latest) in their early teens. It w as, for exam ple, at age 13 that R oger Federer finally gave up

soccer, and a recognizable childhood, and entered Sw itzerland’s national tennis training center

in Ecublens. A t 16, he dropped out of classroom studies and started serious international

com petition.

It w as only w eeks after quitting school that Federer w on Junior W im bledon. O bviously, this is

som ething that not every junior w ho devotes him self to tennis can do. Just as obviously, then,

there is m ore than tim e and training involved — there is also sheer talent, and degrees of it.

Extraordinary kinesthetic ability m ust be present (and m easurable) in a kid just to m ake the

years of practice and training w orthw hile...but from there, over tim e, the cream starts to rise

and separate. So one type of technical explanation for Federer’s dom inion is that he’s just a bit

m ore kinesthetically talented than the other m ale pros. O nly a little bit, since everyone in the

T op 100 is him self kinesthetically gifted — but then, tennis is a gam e of inches.

T his answ er is plausible but incom plete. It w ould probably not have been incom plete in 1980.

In 2006, though, it’s fair to ask w hy this kind of talent still m atters so m uch. R ecall w hat is true

about dogm a and W im bledon’s sign. K inesthetic virtuoso or no, R oger Federer is now

dom inating the largest, strongest, fittest, best-trained and -coached field of m ale pros w ho’ve

ever existed, w ith everyone using a kind of nuclear racket that’s said to have m ade the finer

calibrations of kinesthetic sense irrelevant, like trying to w histle M ozart during a M etallica

concert.

A ccord in g to reliable sou rces, honorary coin-tosser W illiam Caines’s backstory is that one

day, w hen he w as 2½ , his m other found a lum p in his tum m y, and took him to the doctor, and

the lum p w as diagnosed as a m alignant liver tum or. A t w hich point one cannot, of course,

im agine...a tiny child undergoing chem o, serious chem o, his m other having to w atch, carry him

hom e, nurse him , then bring him back to that place for m ore chem o. H ow did she answ er her 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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child’s question — the big one, the obvious one? A nd w ho could answ er hers? W hat could any

priest or pastor say that w ouldn’t be grotesque?

It’s 2-1 N ad al in the final’s second set, and he’s serving. Federer w on the first set at love but

then flagged a bit, as he som etim es does, and is quickly dow n a break. N ow , on N adal’s ad,

there’s a 16-stroke point. N adal is serving a lot faster than he did in Paris, and this one’s dow n

the center. Federer floats a soft forehand high over the net, w hich he can get aw ay w ith because

N adal never com es in behind his serve. T he Spaniard now hits a characteristically heavy

topspin forehand deep to Federer’s backhand; Federer com es back w ith an even heavier

topspin backhand, alm ost a clay-court shot. It’s unexpected and backs N adal up, slightly, and

his response is a low hard short ball that lands just past the service line’s T on Federer’s

forehand side. A gainst m ost other opponents, Federer could sim ply end the point on a ball like

this, but one reason N adal gives him trouble is that he’s faster than the others, can get to stuff

they can’t; and so Federer here just hits a flat, m edium -hard cross-court forehand, going not for

a w inner but for a low , shallow ly angled ball that forces N adal up and out to the deuce side, his

backhand. N adal, on the run, backhands it hard dow n the line to Federer’s backhand; Federer

slices it right back dow n the sam e line, slow and floaty w ith backspin, m aking N adal com e back

to the sam e spot. N adal slices the ball right back — three shots now all dow n the sam e line —

and Federer slices the ball back to the sam e spot yet again, this one even slow er and floatier,

and N adal gets planted and hits a big tw o-hander back dow n the sam e line — it’s like N adal’s

cam ped out now on his deuce side; he’s no longer m oving all the w ay back to the baseline’s

center betw een shots; Federer’s hypnotized him a little. Federer now hits a very hard, deep

topspin backhand, the kind that hisses, to a point just slightly on the ad side of N adal’s baseline,

w hich N adal gets to and forehands cross-court; and Federer responds w ith an even harder,

heavier cross-court backhand, baseline-deep and m oving so fast that N adal has to hit the

forehand off his back foot and then scram ble to get back to center as the shot lands m aybe tw o

feet short on Federer’s backhand side again. Federer steps to this ball and now hits a totally

different cross-court backhand, this one m uch shorter and sharper-angled, an angle no one

w ould anticipate, and so heavy and blurred w ith topspin that it lands shallow and just inside the

sideline and takes off hard after the bounce, and N adal can’t m ove in to cut it off and can’t get to

it laterally along the baseline, because of all the angle and topspin — end of point. It’s a

spectacular w inner, a Federer M om ent; but w atching it live, you can see that it’s also a w inner

that Federer started setting up four or even five shots earlier. Everything after that first dow n-

the-line slice w as designed by the Sw iss to m aneuver N adal and lull him and then disrupt his

rhythm and balance and open up that last, unim aginable angle — an angle that w ould have been

im possible w ithout extrem e topspin.

E xtrem e top sp in is the hallm ark of today’s pow er-baseline gam e. T his is som ething that 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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W im bledon’s sign gets right.(12) W hy topspin is so key, though, is not com m only understood.

W hat’s com m only understood is that high-tech com posite rackets im part m uch m ore pace to

the ball, rather like alum inum baseball bats as opposed to good old lum ber. But that dogm a is

false. T he truth is that, at the sam e tensile strength, carbon-based com posites are lighter than

w ood, and this allow s m odern rackets to be a couple ounces lighter and at least an inch w ider

across the face than the vintage K ram er and M axply. It’s the w idth of the face that’s vital. A

w ider face m eans there’s m ore total string area, w hich m eans the sw eet spot’s bigger. W ith a

com posite racket, you don’t have to m eet the ball in the precise geom etric center of the strings

in order to generate good pace. N or m ust you be spot-on to generate topspin, a spin that (recall)

requires a tilted face and upw ardly curved stroke, brushing over the ball rather than hitting flat

through it — this w as quite hard to do w ith w ood rackets, because of their sm aller face and

niggardly sw eet spot. Com posites’ lighter, w ider heads and m ore generous centers let players

sw ing faster and put w ay m ore topspin on the ball...and, in turn, the m ore topspin you put on

the ball, the harder you can hit it, because there’s m ore m argin for error. T opspin causes the

ball to pass high over the net, describe a sharp arc, and com e dow n fast into the opponent’s

court (instead of m aybe soaring out).

So the basic form ula here is that com posite rackets enable topspin, w hich in turn enables

groundstrokes vastly faster and harder than 20 years ago — it’s com m on now to see m ale pros

pulled up off the ground and halfw ay around in the air by the force of their strokes, w hich in the

old days w as som ething one saw only in Jim m y Connors.

Connors w as not, by the w ay, the father of the pow er-baseline gam e. H e w haled m ightily from

the baseline, true, but his groundstrokes w ere flat and spinless and had to pass very low over

the net. N or w as Bjorn Borg a true pow er-baseliner. Both Borg and Connors played specialized

versions of the classic baseline gam e, w hich had evolved as a counterforce to the even m ore

classic serve-and-volley gam e, w hich w as itself the dom inant form of m en’s pow er tennis for

decades, and of w hich John M cEnroe w as the greatest m odern exponent. Y ou probably know all

this, and m ay also know that M cEnroe toppled Borg and then m ore or less ruled the m en’s

gam e until the appearance, around the m id-1980’s, of (a) m odern com posite rackets(13) and (b)

Ivan Lendl, w ho played w ith an early form of com posite and w as the true progenitor of pow er-

baseline tennis.(14)

Ivan Lendl w as the first top pro w hose strokes and tactics appeared to be designed around the

special capacities of the com posite racket. H is goal w as to w in points from the baseline, via

either passing shots or outright w inners. H is w eapon w as his groundstrokes, especially his

forehand, w hich he could hit w ith overw helm ing pace because of the am ount of topspin he put

on the ball. T he blend of pace and topspin also allow ed Lendl to do som ething that proved 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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crucial to the advent of the pow er-baseline gam e. H e could pull off radical, extraordinary angles

on hard-hit groundstrokes, m ainly because of the speed w ith w hich heavy topspin m akes the

ball dip and land w ithout going w ide. In retrospect, this changed the w hole physics of aggressive

tennis. For decades, it had been angle that m ade the serve-and-volley gam e so lethal. T he

closer one is to the net, the m ore of the opponent’s court is open — the classic advantage of

volleying w as that you could hit angles that w ould go w ay w ide if attem pted from the baseline

or m idcourt. But topspin on a groundstroke, if it’s really extrem e, can bring the ball dow n fast

and shallow enough to exploit m any of these sam e angles. Especially if the groundstroke you’re

hitting is off a som ew hat short ball — the shorter the ball, the m ore angles are possible. Pace,

topspin, and aggressive baseline angles: and lo, it’s the pow er-baseline gam e.

It w asn’t that Ivan Lendl w as an im m ortally great tennis player. H e w as sim ply the first top pro

to dem onstrate w hat heavy topspin and raw pow er could achieve from the baseline. A nd, m ost

im portant, the achievem ent w as replicable, just like the com posite racket. Past a certain

threshold of physical talent and training, the m ain requirem ents w ere athleticism , aggression,

and superior strength and conditioning. T he result (om itting various com plications and

subspecialties(15)) has been m en’s pro tennis for the last 20 years: ever bigger, stronger, fitter

players generating unprecedented pace and topspin off the ground, trying to force the short or

w eak ball that they can put aw ay.

Illustrative stat: W hen Lleyton H ew itt defeated D avid N albandian in the 2002 W im bledon

m en’s final, there w as not one single serve-and-volley point.(16)

T he generic pow er-baseline gam e is not boring — certainly not com pared w ith the tw o-second

points of old-tim e serve-and-volley or the m oon-ball tedium of classic baseline attrition. But it

is som ew hat static and lim ited; it is not, as pundits have publicly feared for years, the

evolutionary endpoint of tennis. T he player w ho’s show n this to be true is R oger Federer. A nd

he’s show n it from w ithin the m odern gam e.

T his w ithin is w hat’s im portant here; this is w hat a purely neural account leaves out. A nd it is

w hy sexy attributions like touch and subtlety m ust not be m isunderstood. W ith Federer, it’s

not either/or. T he Sw iss has every bit of Lendl and A gassi’s pace on his groundstrokes, and

leaves the ground w hen he sw ings, and can out-hit even N adal from the backcourt.(17) W hat’s

strange and w rong about W im bledon’s sign, really, is its overall dolorous tone. Subtlety, touch,

and finesse are not dead in the pow er-baseline era. For it is, still, in 2006, very m uch the

pow er-baseline era: R oger Federer is a first-rate, kick-ass pow er-baseliner. It’s just that that’s

not all he is. T here’s also his intelligence, his occult anticipation, his court sense, his ability to

read and m anipulate opponents, to m ix spins and speeds, to m isdirect and disguise, to use 5/14/2014 Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - NYTimes.com

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tactical foresight and peripheral vision and kinesthetic range instead of just rote pace — all this

has exposed the lim its, and possibilities, of m en’s tennis as it’s now played.

W hich sounds very high-flow n and nice, of course, but please understand that w ith this guy it’s

not high-flow n or abstract. O r nice. In the sam e em phatic, em pirical, dom inating w ay that Lendl

drove hom e his ow n lesson, R oger Federer is show ing that the speed and strength of today’s

pro gam e are m erely its skeleton, not its flesh. H e has, figuratively and literally, re-em bodied

m en’s tennis, and for the first tim e in years the gam e’s future is unpredictable. Y ou should have

seen, on the grounds’ outside courts, the variegated ballet that w as this year’s Junior

W im bledon. D rop volleys and m ixed spins, off-speed serves, gam bits planned three shots ahead

— all as w ell as the standard-issue grunts and boom ing balls. W hether anything like a nascent

Federer w as here am ong these juniors can’t be know n, of course. G enius is not replicable.

Inspiration, though, is contagious, and m ultiform — and even just to see, close up, pow er and

aggression m ade vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, m ortal w ay)

reconciled.

David Foster W allace is the author of “Infinite Jest,” “Consider the Lobster” and several other books.