In my post on Svetlana Kuznetsova's big win her yesterday, I wrote about the place mountaineers call "The Death Zone." It begins at 26,000 feet, where climbers without bottled oxygen are subject to experiencing potentially fatal hypoxia, and other symptoms of oxygen starvation: most notably, poor or confused judgement.
There's a Death Zone in tennis, too - it's called "finals of big tournaments", and while it's found a lot closer to sea level, it can affect the judgment and performance of players roughly the same way that lack of oxygen affects climbers. Good players find ways to function in the Death Zone; great players go up there, settle in, and dance the happy dance of life.
Roger Federer is a great player. He showed it again yesterday in beating Ivan Ljubicic for the title in Miami; this was the second year in a row that Federer has won the Spring, U.S. hard court championships at Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. It's a remarkable achievment, when you consider that winning a Masters Series tournament, in the eyes of some, is almost as difficult as taking a Grand Slam for a less than obvious reason.
In majors, players compete on alternate days. In many Masters series events, finalists plays as many as six matches in seven days - the stamina required to do that is formidable.
Today's match was one of the most pleasant I can remember having watched in a long time. The skies were sunny and still, the players looked like tennis players, not wannabe rocks stars, and the match itself was like the sea on a calm day - it had plenty of swells, but no violent shifts or crashing waves.
Ljubicic had no trouble identifying Federer's superiority in the Death Zone: When I asked him if Federer's talent for lifting his game at the most critical of moments was learned or innate, he replied:
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"You have to ask him. I don't know how he does it. But it's definitely he raise his level especially in tiebreaks. I played many tiebreaks now against him and I won a few, but he definitely play best tennis in the tiebreaks
"I don't know, I think hs tiebreak record this year is like 11-1, and the one he lost he was up 4-0 on Clement. He's definitely playing the best tennis in the tiebreak. There's no fortunate (luck) there."
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Between breakers, Ljubicic and Federer thrusted and parried entertainingly, but at crunch time it was almost like he asked himself, as does everyone else, "Okay, this is Roger Federer. Who am I kidding?"
That's not meant as a slight of Ljubicic (I'll be doing full post on him tomorrow (promise!) - it's a comment on the stranglehold Federer has on the game, and on how much capital that provides him with when it comes time to invest his emotions in a critical situation, like a key tiebreaker.
Apart from that, I had one outstanding Federer moment. It occurred early in the match, I'm no longer even sure exactly when. But Federer hit a backhand approach shot that, well, it would just be silly and wooden for me to try to describe it literally.
What he did was hit a flat backhand approach from the midcourt, while moving forward, without stopping. Anybody else even tries it, and it's a disaster. You're supposed to be set up when you hit the flat-to-topspin approach; and you certainly can't be running toward the net as you do it. Federer violated every rule of Tennis 101, and he looked elegant and absolutely natural doing it.
What's a fella supposed to do?
Okay, I gotta get out of here and catch my flight. Old School Luby tomorrow.
Thanks for reading this week, everybody. You make - and keep - this fun!