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by Pete Bodo
You may have read the report that British charity organization Oxfam (which works internationally to alleviate "poverty and injustice") may be the recipient of a hefty donation should Roger Federer win his seventh Wimbledon title, thanks to a compassionate, deceased punter from Kidlington, near the British city of Oxford.
Nicolas Newlife (oh, the irony!) left his entire estate as well as any proceeds from gambling earnings to Oxfam when he died in February of 2009. In 2003, Newlife bet the equivalent of about $3,000 U.S. dollars that Federer would win at least seven Wimbledon singles titles by the year 2019—receiving 66:1 odds—so Oxfam could be some $200,000 richer should Federer (who has six Wimbledon titles) triumph again. The Mighty Fed was upset last year in the quarterfinals by Tomas Berdych, who subsequently lost to Rafael Nadal in the final.
That's a pretty good reason to pull for Federer to win Wimbledon again, but the realist in me is saying you might do pretty well for Oxfam—or yourself, if you're not that into giving away your "earned" money—if you bet that neither Federer nor Nadal will win or even be in the Wimbledon final this year.
I know, I know, the very idea is either heretical or about as massive a dose of buzzkill as anyone could be expected to absorb a few days before the beginning of the Fortnight. But the adults among us know that nothing lasts forever, especially nothing as good as Federer vs. Nadal has been over the years. Isn't it good enough that the two men have clashed epically at Wimbledon, and more than once? How many times can we expect these two to play "The Greatest Match of All Time?"
But there's more to it than that this year, much more. Federer is rapidly closing on 30, and he's won just one tournament this year—a main-tour entry-level, ATP 250 event in Doha, at the very start of 2011. Granted, he's been in two other finals—one of them at a major (the French Open). And only two men not named Novak Djokovic or Nadal have beaten him: Jurgen Melzer (quarterfinals of Monte Carlo) and Richard Gasquet (third round of Rome).
Federer's record is good enough to keep him solidly entrenched as the No. 3, and those two losses to players less than his equal came on clay, his "worst" surface. Ironically, though, the fact that Federer was able to reach the Roland Garros final suggests that the losses to Melzer and Gasquet can't easily be explained away as a matter of surface preference. The fact is, Federer just wasn't good enough on those days, and those days are becoming more common in this stage of his career.
Melzer may not be a threat on grass, but Gasquet has shown us what he can do on that surface: He's been to the Wimbledon semis (losing to Federer), beaten Andy Roddick at the All England Club, and three years ago at SW19 gave Andy Murray all he could handle in a 6-4 in-the-fifth loss in the fourth round.
The Wimbledon draw will abound with players of Gasquet's caliber or better, what with Juan Martin del Potro back in the mix, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga stirring to life again, and ace machines like John Isner, Ivo Karlovic and newcomer Milos Raonic always ready to make life tough for the main contenders. Federer has never had a bad loss at Wimbledon since he won his first title there, and history suggests that everyone (other than Bjorn Borg) will inevitably suffer the unexpected humiliation on turf.
While the much-ballyhooed slowing of Wimbledon grass has somewhat diminished the vulnerability of the favorites, the sheer weight of tradition and history have all contributed to the upset-friendly nature of tournament. For every Boris Becker there was a Peter Doohan (second round, 1987); for every John McEnroe a Derrick Rostagno (first round, 1990); for every Pete Sampras a George Bastl (second round, 2002). Federer hasn't had his Doohan or Rostango moment yet, and maybe he'll retire without one. Last year, though, he experienced what Jimmy Connors felt the year he lost in the fourth round to Kevin Curren, and what Sampras dealt with when he lost to Richard Krajicek.
Beyond that looms the threat of the man everyone suddenly seems to have forgotten in the past few weeks, Novak Djokovic. Federer beat him in the French Open semis, and you would have thought Djokovic fell off the face of the earth for the amount of hype he's generated since then. I suppose everyone was "streaked out" and needed a break, but let's not forget that Djokovic has a very good reason to be sore at Federer, and an even better one to win his first major somewhere other than in Australia. We don't know which side of the draw TMF will land on, but he'll have to contend with either Nadal or Djokovic before he can even think about the final (assuming his chief rivals make it through that far).
Nadal is just 25, but he's got his own motivational problems. It must have been an enormous emotional boost for Rafa when Federer knocked Djokovic out of his way in Paris, yet the undercurrent of complaint and something like disillusion that informed Nadal's halting progress in Paris wasn't entirely eliminated by his triumph (yet again) on red clay. It seems that Nadal is increasingly given to asking those corrosive Big Picture questions regarding the dedication and commitment required by tennis, and that's not necessarily a good thing. At some point, a great player is not just entitled but expected to ask himself, "Do I really need another (fill in the major) title?" And that's often the point at which he loses a little bit of that champion's edge.
More than one observer has drawn comparisons between Nadal and Borg, starting with their shared, preternatural proficiency on clay. The more dangerous and perhaps relevant parallels are that Borg quit the game at 25 (according to him, he discussed taking the early retirement plan with his parents months before John McEnroe beat him in back-to-back Grand Slam finals in 1981), and it was partly for the same reasons Nadal has been carping about lately—the degree of commitment the tour demands. Nadal just doesn't seem as hungry and eager to prove (re-prove is more accurate) himself as he's been in the past.
Some of Nadal's disillusion probably can be attributed to the way Djokovic hunted him down this spring, even if the process was, for Nadal, just a taste of his own medicine. Wasn't Nadal the one who was so hot on Federer's tail, for so long, that we half-expected him to be served with a restraining order? I believe Nadal when he says that he never set out to de-throne Federer—that he just loved the competition, and the task of measuring himself against the best. But it amounted to the same thing, as far as the dynamics go. And now, in what seems the blink of an eye, the tables are vividly turned, and not in a way that Nadal appears to find comfortable. This isn't Federer, bent on revenge, pushing him. This is an X-factor leaping out of ether to make life a little more complicated that it has been for years.
As the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, respectively, Nadal and Djokovic can only meet in the Wimbledon final. Nadal is probably thinking he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it, but I'm thinking "if" he comes to it. In his push to get at Federer, Nadal has been the soul of determination and competence. He hasn't lost to anyone at Wimbledon other than Federer since he made his first final in SW19, in 2006. He's had some close calls, though—grueling five-setters with, among others, Robin Soderling, Philipp Petzschner, and even a serve-and-volley practitioner ranked No. 237 at the time, Robert Kendrick.
If Nadal's game was persistently ragged and resistant to smoothing out for most of the French Open, the the court he absolutely owns, what happens if the same erratic tendencies show up in his game, or focus, on the grass at Wimbledon? The answer is, "anything."
Nadal has dodged many bullets at Wimbledon, not every one fired by his comrade in glory, Federer. It would be ironic, but in some ways fitting, if these great rivals and competitors fell from grace together, just as they reached a glorious culmination together. You'd have to be a misanthrope to wish for it to happen, but that doesn't mean it couldn't work out that way.