The Final Stanza of an Eternal Romance

Is it time?

I find English summers very romantic. For the most part, because of their stark contrast to the heat-stroke carnivals that are summers in Delhi, Calcutta, and Chennai. In England, the air is dense, rain clouds lurk over your head, and it occasionally gets chilly enough for a sweater. London’s forecast for Thursday reads a maximum of 19 degrees Celcius and a minimum of 11. Even when it is sunny outside, the shade of their sunlight feels just that bit warmer. I am yet to visit the country, but if I ever do, it will be between June and August.

There are other reasons for my fascination too. English summers come with good sport. Their cricket team have a steady stream of Test matches during these months, and then there’s always Wimbledon. Add vivid grass and clear whites to my favourite kind of weather and we have an irresistible cocktail.

Funnily enough, my first experience of Wimbledon was through radio. Our cable operator only ran three Doordarshan channels — National, Metro, and Bangla — until about late 1996. There was the occasional ESPN feed, but it depended on India’s cricket schedule. In the summer of ‘96, India were touring England. There was extra coverage on Doordarshan and ESPN, but the Doordarshan broadcast and our cable guy were both unreliable. So we depended on the radio as an accompaniment to the television sometimes, and sole caller of the play at others.

We also got more channels on the radio. When India weren’t playing cricket, we got the BBC feed from Wimbledon. Someone called it the annual pilgrimage for tennis. One small general knowledge book I had listed all tennis tournaments as Something-Open.

“So, this is Wimbledon Open?” “No, just Wimbledon. This is more prestigious.”

I remember a sentence from a magazine that went along the lines of - “like athletes are judged by their Olympic medals, tennis players are judged by their performances at Wimbledon.” The commentary on BBC was very British, with the unmistakable accent and familiar lilt of the trailing consonants.

The following year, we got the full feed from ESPN, and I watched Wimbledon on video. It was a different world. The colours! Why had the radio commentators not mentioned this enough? White, green, and purple, in incredibly soothing shades. Maybe the person who coined the word pristine was watching Wimbledon when they thought of it. 

I don’t remember if there was ample broadcast of the other Grand Slams, but there was a buzz around Wimbledon. ESPN’s Sportscenter devoted an extra fifteen minutes once the tournament started. Sport rarely got better than Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf, and Andre Agassi at the hallowed turf. Wimbledon was all the tennis I watched and learned from for a couple of years. I realised that crowds had to be silent between the points. Unlike in cricket and football, the soundtrack of this sport wasn’t a raucous audience, but the sounds of moving feet and tense fibre strings hitting a fluorescent yellow ball. I found the silence odd at first, but it grew on me. Even the commentators didn’t speak while the play was on. 

Sampras and Graf were immediate favourites. Both had a fluidity to their game and moved like gazelles on the court. You couldn’t hear their feet, but just a whoosh, like a brush sweeping across a table. I tried replicating their movements at the neighbourhood park and got loud, annoying thuds instead.

Sampras kept winning one Wimbledon after another. He was nimble yet physical — his serve-and-volley style felt forceful. Tennis isn’t the most accessible sport to play, so I decided that I will have his hard serve and one-handed backhand if and when I ever played the sport. Later in life, when I did become half-decent at it, I took particular joy every time a backhand came off. 

And then, one year, Sampras was beaten in the fourth round. It was unbelievable. Is Sampras really exiting Wimbledon that early? Times of India carried his post-match interview that week. He spoke glowingly about this new guy, someone called Roger Federer. He is special.

I saw Federer the following year. Long hair, bandana, a gawky gait. Anything but the elegance Wimbledon’s setting demanded. He could audition for the Bollywood movie Josh if he had a more defined upper body. A flash in the pan, I thought. He won the tournament a year later but only had Mark Philippoussis to beat in the finals. Again, unimpressive. Yes, you won the trophy, but did you really win if you only had to beat, with due respect, Kenya in a World Cup final? 

It wasn’t until 2004 that I saw — nah, experienced — a Federer Wimbledon™ properly. It was unbelievable. For starters, that one-handed backhand was so fluid. It seemed like an extension of his hands. A lot like Sampras’, but aesthetically so much better. He also had Graf’s elegance and movement, but quicker. Forget hearing him move; he was too swift to sometimes even see him move. And then there was the sound from his racquet. It wasn’t the snare drum hit that I associated with tennis players all this while, but a slightly defined click. It was power without any hint of violence. The ball seemed to have a lesser loop and more kinetic energy, barely skimming past the tape of the net and landing way too perfectly in a corner for the whole production to be normal. He sprinted across the court in awkward angles, yet in control of his body like nothing I had seen before. How can someone move this beautifully? Maybe Bernoulli could make a few laws on Federer’s mechanics if he were alive.

For the next few years, Federer became Wimbledon. He wore the aesthetic and looked like an embodiment of the Wimby chic. English summers turned brighter. Over time, Federer set up shop on a plane that only a few athletes ever inhabit. He wasn’t just winning everything in sight, but it was impossible to not go weak in the knees while watching him. Oohs and aahs were regular, but mildly inappropriate noises soon accompanied them. Nothing about those noises felt dirty. 

Rafael Nadal rolled into town, and he pushed Federer to uncomfortable edges. The young Spanish tyro was beating him at big matches and tournaments. But there seemed to be this incredible respect between the two. Federer knew he had finally met someone worth calling a rival; Nadal knew his time had come. Multiple times, especially in the early years of their rivalry, Federer had to defend with all his might to stay afloat. Nadal seemed intent on testing his tensile strength. Yet, amongst all the stretching, Federer never lost his style. The ball sometimes landed a little too much to the left or right, but the unique sounds of his shoes and racquet were always audible. The ballet on grass never stopped.

Age caught up too, and conversations changed route. From the ceilings of his greatness to the floor of his fuel tank. How long could he go on? Tennis players retire early — Sampras quit at 31 — and Federer was nearing that milestone. But would Roger Federer be Roger Federer if he looked at age as a fork in the road? Federer reinvented his game, brought in a more attacking backhand — always here for that — and telegraphed his intentions of breaching twenty Grand Slams. So he did. Not even multiple surgeries could hold his genius and drive. He wasn’t winning as much as a decade back, but he was still one of the three best in the circuit. An Australian Open title in 2017 was followed by a match point at Wimbledon in 2019, before he ran into the physical force of edge-of-the-cliff-Djokovic. 

He slowed down some more. It became clear that while his genius was still good enough to roll past most of the roster, maybe Nadal and Djokovic had more in their bodies. Every summer brought with it an anticipation of Federer’s physical status. Wimbledon would always be his annual checkpoint, an evaluation of his body to see how much more he could get out of it. Defeats, sometimes crushing, became more frequent by the month. He played at Wimbledon last year, ranked sixth in the world. In the quarter-final, Hubert Hurkacz beat him in straight sets, the last one 6-0. It was agonising to even watch, never mind the pain of enduring it.

Athletes like Federer and Nadal are built differently. Nadal recently spoke about how he, Federer, and Djokovic have achieved all their dreams and much more. Their careers have gone beyond the point where an extra trophy in the cupboard is a specific target. They are all just chasing an athlete’s ultimate drug -- the thrill of playing at the highest level, the sweat of preparation, the challenge of seeing past the next best, and maintaining the monumental standards built over a career. 

And at some point, their bodies probably stop recovering from the physical toll of that process. You move in soreness, between one court to the other. After winning the French Open this year, Nadal spoke about his life after tennis and how he wants to ensure his injuries don’t make an unfixable dent. It was a telling thought from someone we have come to associate gladiatorial imagery with. 

This English summer, Roger Federer is missing from the London lawns. For the first time in twenty-four years, he will not be playing at Wimbledon. It doesn’t as much evoke shock as a realisation that the most remarkable car in town is entering its last mile. Wimbledon is Federer’s spiritual home, and it must take an incredible tax on his body to forego the thrill of wearing fresh whites and gliding onto the grass once more. 

Will the tournament feel the same? Right now, it doesn’t, but life and tennis will move on eventually. We got to watch the entire career of Roger Federer, and there wasn’t a more pristine sight in sport than him at Wimbledon. I do wish for him to call it quits after one more of those glorious backhands, but at this point, that’s just me being greedy. He gave us enough.

It has been one hell of an experience. And like David Foster Wallace famously said, a romantic and religious one.