Rather
than continuously praise Roger Federer with superlative adjectives, it is much
easier to simply look at his stats and specifically the records he has broken.
The two
that are the most immediate after his victory over Andy Murray in four sets in
the 2012 Wimbledon final are his tying Pete Sampras’s record of seven Wimbledon
championships and regaining the #1 ranking.
The ranking is most important because by doing so Federer equals the total
number of weeks at #1 record set by Sampras and next week he will pass the
record.
From
Wikipedia a few others…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_career_achievements_by_Roger_Federer
Now I’ve
written about Andy Murray before and the problems with his game http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2010/01/australian-open-2010-roger-federers.html but watching
him in that final was like watching someone deliberately try not to win. Not “try” in the sense, he wasn’t making an
effort to win but “try” meaning he was doing everything wrong. First off, whoever advised or coached Murray
as a youngster to develop a two handed backhand instead of a one handed slice
should be shot. Yes, a number of two
handed players have won Wimbledon but they made changes to their games for the
grass surface. Bjorn Borg and Lleyton
Hewitt both had slice backhands and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic both ran
around their backhands and stood in. All
four players play or played very aggressively on grass which as part of the
reason they did very well there.
Andre
Agassi, also a two hander and a Wimbledon winner, won because he took the ball
so early on both the forehand and the backhand side it became an offensive shot. Murray, on the other hand, stands so far
behind the baseline (and the distance got further and further as the match
turned in Federer’s favor) and is far too defensive to do any real damage
against someone like Federer.
Murray’s
body language is that of a frustrated loser.
One doesn’t have to be an ice man like Borg but the way Murray hung his
head, his dour, droopy posture screams ‘I’m losing this match. I have no chance of winning”.
Part
of Murray’s problem might be his coach-Ivan Lendl. Now Lendl was a great champion but he had
many of the same problems as Murray early in his career – Had a reputation for
choking in finals, lost his first several grand slam finals, had very negative
body language also he never won Wimbledon.
Perhaps a change of coach is in order.
Ina
any event once the roof was closed and the variables were eliminated from the
game, Federer went on kill mode. A
fantastic performance and considering neither Nadal nor Djokovic are at their
best right now, Federer has a very good chance to win a record 6th US
Open later this year.
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