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Upset for the Ages
Federer’s matches usually have the inevitability of a serial killer movie where you know a moment of placidity will be followed by the killer sneaking up behind the girl and slashing her throat. Federer will be smoothing along through a match, letting you think you’re in it and then, like Jordan, like Kobe, he’ll find a critical moment, step on the gas and suddenly ten consecutive points have been lost and you’re out of it. You’re dead. So all through the fourth and fifth set I awaited the arrival of the killer. But he never came.
Del Potro is now the tallest man to ever win a Slam because height is a gift and a curse in tennis. After 6’3” it becomes more of a hindrance than a help because even though height enables big serving, it makes movement tougher. Guys who are 6’4” or 6’5” often find the points they win through big serves are fewer than those they lose when they get into rallies and are unable to move as well as guys who are closer to 6-feet tall. Tennis is a game of quickness, sharp direction changes, and little steps and tall guys tend not to be as good at those things as their shorter brothers. But del Potro is an anomaly. He has excellent mobility and agility for a tall guy. Some tall players like 6’5” Mark Phillippoussis seem to lumber around the court but del Potro moves like a smaller man while he serves like a big man and uses his long arms to wind up and hit that monster forehand.
All that is why he’ll be a star for years to come. The top rung of tennis—Federer and Nadal—has been joined. But today Federer lost a winnable match. He beat himself. The final game was an encapsulation: Federer, serving at 2-5, blows two easy backhands and an easy forehand to reach 15-40. He fends off the match points and gets to game point but is stymied by a big del Potro forehand. At deuce the great one double faults to reach match point for a third time. On this one del Potro angles Federer off the court—pushing him into defense—and then uses one last big forehand to create a Federer error.
That’s when del Potro laid flat on the court, as much in shock as anyone in the stadium.
Touré is a columnist for The Daily Beast. He's also an NBC contributor and the author of Never Drank the Kool-Aid, Soul City, and The Portable Promised Land. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, was CNN's first pop culture correspondent, and was the host of MTV2's Spoke N Heard. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.
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Touré is a columnist for The Daily Beast. He's also an NBC contributor and the author of Never Drank the Kool-Aid, Soul City, and The Portable Promised Land. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, was CNN's first pop culture correspondent, and was the host of MTV2's Spoke N Heard. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.
septemberist
I find this to be a very disappointing and biased review (biased against the Argentinean "unknown" player, who came from a distant 60ish place in the ranking in July 2008 to a 5th place today, in a meteoric but consistent progression many of us were following). In your review you tell us how Federer "lost" the match, as opposed to how Juan Martin del Potro beat him. Your review absolutely downplays this very young Argentinean player, who knew how to keep his cool and focus all the way till the end, even when he was two sets down playing against super-Federer. About losing his cool with the umpchair, a fact to which you seem to attribute much significance in relation to the turnout of events, Mr. Federer himself declared to the media in no uncertain terms that that moment in particular had "nothing to do" with his performance and the final outcome of the match. Moreover, he very publicly complemented del Potro: "Congratulations, you deserved to win," an assessment that he later repeated to whoever wanted to hear in all interviews in a display of absolute fairness and good sportsmanship --not a surprise, as we have consistently learned from Mr. Federer during all these years.
Thank you.
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