Mom and Tennis . . . and Federer

I owe Roger Federer a lot. It was about four years ago in 2005 when I was watching the French Open, I guess, when something unexpected happened. My mother, your typical stoic Indian housewife, started watching the game. I told her about how this guy named Federer was already on his way to greatness, and also about this teenaged Spanish fellow named Rafael Nadal who kept running and retrieving all that his rivals threw at him. Before I knew, my mother got hooked onto the diet of tennis and of course, Federer.

For all her life, my mother has never had any aim except to see to it that her two children, me and my sister, are well looked after. She’s had no desires of her own, except to see our desires getting fulfilled. Now, she had one. And that was to see this mild-mannered Swiss win, match after match, tournament after tournament. She’d never had any hero in her life to look upto, now she had one. Soon, she started to love the game of tennis because of him.

Her domestic chore schedule started being dictated by Grand Slam draws. Most of her tasks are completed before Federer descends on to Centre Court. After that, till the match lasts, it’s a roller coaster ride of emotions. Each hold of serve is greeted with a sigh of relief, each break of serve silently cheered with a look of ‘finally, you managed to do it’. The nowadays vulnerable backhand is admonished while his seemingly dwindling capacity to crank up the aces regularly is fretted about constantly.

When I’m at office, I am assured of regular score updates, a bit too regular if Federer is playing that day. She knows her tennis history basics well. Rod Laver’s or Bjorn Borg’s presence on the court doesn’t go unnoticed. Nadal is viewed with revulsion and scorn, although with a grudging respect and admiration for his never-say-die approach. (This year at Wimbledon, she’s realized that for all his beauty and grace, its not Federer but Nadal who brings verve and vitality to a tournament). Players that Roger loves to whip are her favourites, Andy Roddick, Nikolay Davydenko, Lleyton Hewitt, James Blake. Murray and Djokovic are the arrogant upstarts who dare to - and occasionally do - upset her favourite’s applecart.

After he lost the Wimbledon 2008 final to Nadal, the atmosphere at home for the next few days was funereal. I cried with relief after he came back from the dead to take the tie to a fifth set, but I knew Nadal deserved to win that day. But mom couldn’t reconcile to the fact that Federer had lost. “It was Wimbledon, wasn’t it? Not the stupid red clay which these Spaniards anyways love. How dare he!” she said of Nadal.

When he lost the 2009 Australian Open to Nadal, he was hardly able to speak, and then someone from the crowd shouted, “We love you, Federer”. The dam broke, and the Master wept like a kid. And she wept along with him, feeling the disappointment of her champion, his tacit acceptance of Nadal’s superiority that day.

Later, she was over the moon when Federer finally won the French Open this year.

What does she see in this man, she, this non-matriculate, village-bred, middle-aged Indian woman? Tennis is not supposed to be for her, is it? It’s supposed to be an elitist sport. I believe it’s the wizard-like artistry in Federer that enchants her, though she might not be able to describe it in as many words. The guy has a way of endearing himself to anyone, even a commoner. He is supremely controlled yet amenable to the occasional display of emotion, invincible on his day yet vulnerable in a delicate manner, all deft touches and then some brutal hits, almost immortal yet almost the guy-next-door.

For me, in an abstract manner, he is the closest I have seen to Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’. He is as man ‘should be’, existing for the sake of his work, his art, his game. The court is his canvas, the racquet his brush, all the tennis records his to paint. He exists for no other reason, and one can’t imagine otherwise. The fluidity of his movements, the beauty of his shot-making, his grace in occasional defeat, and his humility in victory all point to the greatness of what man can achieve.

You’re special for my mother and millions of other fans across the world. Thank you, Roger.