Varieties of Tennis Excellence

Serena Williams and Roger Federer have never run in the same race, exactly, but the best players of their co-era have spent the 21st century catching up, passing, falling behind, and catching back up to each other. These fellow 33-year-olds will finish 2014 with nearly the same number of major titles: 18 for Serena, 17 for Federer. And with their victories on Sunday, they put themselves back at the head of their respective tour packs.

Serena started the day with a blowout final-round win in Singapore for her fifth WTA Finals title. A few hours later, Federer matched her performance with his sixth championship in Basel. Over the weekend, they showed off their characteristic, and distinct, varieties of dominance.

Serena’s was the bigger and more prestigious title; for years, she routinely missed this end-of-season event—Slams and Slams alone were her thing. Now she has won three season-ending events in a row, and her presence alone has given the tournament a major-like atmosphere.

In some ways, this was the most impressive win of Serena’s three-peat. She had injured her knee a few weeks earlier in Beijing, and there was speculation that her season was over. Then, in Singapore, she had been hit with her most one-sided defeat since the 20th century, 6-0, 6-2 to Simona Halep. Yet by the time the week was over, Serena showed that when it comes to head-to-head WTA competition, she’s still the best of the best.

“I just started training again because I had such a bad knee in Beijing,” Serena said. “I can’t believe I’m even in Singapore, and now I have the Billie Jean King Trophy, so I’m just really excited.”

Did she sound just a little more incredulous about her title on the outside than she really was on the inside? Probably—holding up a trophy is never going to come as a surprise to Serena. But she almost didn’t get a chance to hoist this one. Aside from her loss to Halep, she had to survive an extremely close call, and an extremely good match, with Caroline Wozniacki in the semifinals. Serena has a reputation for hitting first and worrying later, and she came out belting her returns against Wozniacki; she had to go big against the ultra-consistent Caro on Singapore’s slow courts. But when that didn’t work, Serena smashed her racquet in five places, and then, anger vented, patiently dialed back her returns and went for depth rather than pace. Eventually, it worked.

“I thought she played totally different,” Serena said of Wozniacki afterward, without letting us know exactly what Caro had done differently. “She had a whole new strategy. I was kind of able to figure it out in the second...I thought, 'Ha! I got you now.' Not in particular to her, but in particular what to do against Serena.”

The next day, Serena didn’t let Halep do anything to her. Her 6-3, 6-0 win required no modulation in game plan; she started out swinging big, rushing the net, and throwing her fist in the Romanian’s face. Serena obviously has the physical edge over Halep, and she didn’t waste any opportunity to let the WTA Finals rookie know it. Two days earlier, Halep had kept the world No. 1 in the tournament by eliminating Ana Ivanovic, but Serena wasn't looking to say thank you in the final.

“I think knowing she has the ability and the capability to play so well,” Williams said, “I knew that I had to step up my game. I think I knew that I had to play better.”

Serena is a champion who thrives on making things personal—look no further than her decade-long run of domination over Maria Sharapova. But I would say her wins over Maria, like her win over Halep, are less about revenge and more about motivation. For the third straight year, Serena has taken the strongest new rival the WTA has to offer and knocked her back a step. In 2012, it was Victoria Azarenka; in 2013, it was Li Na; this time it was the game’s breakout of 2014, Halep.

“She’s making me a better player,” Serena said of Simona.

While she won seven titles and finished No. 1 for the third straight time, 2014 wasn’t the best season of Serena’s career—three early Slam losses doesn’t cut it in her mind. But maybe “best” is an irrelevant term when you’re referring to a player who, after 18 majors and 16 years on tour, is still talking about getting better.

Serena Williams thrives on personal competition and confrontation; Roger Federer thrives on its opposite. The British sportswriter Simon Barnes likes to describe the Swiss as offering fans “the illusion of cooperation with his opponent”—everything that he and his foe do on court appears to be designed to spotlight Federer’s magical skills alone.

Barnes was thinking in particular of Federer's matches with Andy Roddick; the American’s limited attack was the perfect foil was Federer’s seemingly limitless one. But even that lopsided dynamic paled in comparison to the one that was in effect during Federer’s 6-2, 6-2 win over David Goffin in the Basel final on Sunday. Everything there really was designed with the Maestro in mind.

The tournament is nominally called the Swiss Indoors, but the Roger Federer Invitational might be more accurate. Basel is Federer’s hometown, and he’s reached the final 11 times. He was a ball boy at the event as a junior, and he has an annual pizza party with the kids who do that job today. The largest logos in the arena spell out ROGER. When he plays, the Swiss fans offer Federer their considered applause, and his opponent their studied silence.

So it made a certain amount of sense that Goffin was his opponent. Two years ago at Roland Garros, the little Belgian had helped entertain Federer’s Parisian faithful by losing to him in a four-set shot-maker’s special. Before the match, the baby-faced Goffin admitted to having had a poster of Federer on his bedroom wall in Liege, Belgium. Afterward, the two were all smiles as they did their post-match on-court interview together. What did Goffin have to say about his defeat?

"It was a great moment that I'll never forget."

That day Federer said he had liked the way Goffin played, and hoped to see him in the Top 20 someday. He may yet: After burning up the Challenger circuit this summer and recording his first Top 10 win over Milos Raonic in Basel, Goffin has reached a career-high No. 22. He’s no longer the wiry, high-flying kid of 2012; his game has more heft, and his serve more pop.

But he didn’t have nearly enough pop, on any of his shots, for Federer. The Swiss, in a calmly crowd-pleasing mood, was sharp from beginning to end, on both serves and returns. Federer won 93 percent of the points played on his second serve and didn’t face a break point. At the same time, he won 75 percent of the points played on Goffin’s second serve. Federer pushed forward with ease and had no trouble sending his backhand down the line for winners.

“It's always such a treat to be in the final here, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd," Federer said. "It’s why I play tennis, why I play the tournament here in Basel.”

If anything, Federer hadn’t given his fans enough of himself—it was all over in 51 minutes.

Like Serena, Federer hasn’t had his best season—she managed to win one major; he didn’t come away with any. But like her, he has been very good everywhere else. Federer has five titles, a tour-high 66 wins against 10 losses, and a dozen victories over Top 10 players. With his 500 points from Basel, he could also match Serena and finish the season No. 1.

That’s one more thing these two champions have in common. Serena and Federer have claimed, at various times, that where they’re ranked doesn’t matter to them. But they do seem to care about one ranking in particular.

“It would be very special to reclaim No. 1,” Federer said on Sunday. “World No. 1 is what it’s all about in our game.”

Roger and Serena know where they belong.

While Federer and Williams were in domination mode, two other players were having a very different experience in their own final, in Valencia. For the second time this fall, Andy Murray and Tommy Robredo found themselves locked in a helplessly vicious war of attrition. Neither could hurt the other—Robredo because he doesn’t have the stick on the ball to get it past Murray; Murray because he doesn’t have the mindset to take it straight to Robredo. Unbelievably, for the second straight time, the Scot saved five match points to beat the Spaniard, 3-6, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (8).

If this one wasn’t the Match of the Year, it surely was the War of the Year. It was only fitting that it ended with both players cramping and unable to stand. It was even more fitting that it ended with one of them, Robredo, giving the finger—with a smile—to the other.

“It was an incredible match,” Murray said. “The tennis at the end and in the second set was a very high level.”

At three hours and 20 minutes, it was the longest ATP final of the year. Murray hit 45 winners to Robredo’s 39, and he did it while staggering around the court, zombie-like, exhausted and perhaps even delirious. Murray talked to himself non-stop, flashed a demented smile after his errors, and struggled to stay on his feet between points—that is, when he didn’t finish them flat on his back.

Yet Murray always had another step, and another shot, left in him. At 5-6 in the third-set tiebreaker, the match appeared to be over when Robredo fired an inside-out forehand into the corner. But Murray tracked it down near the bleacher wall and eventually turned the tables in the rally. For his part, Robredo was just as good, and just as determined. He came up with his own ludicrously unlikely passing shot in the third set, a backhand stab that appeared to be floating long until it dropped like a stone into the corner for a winner. Murray, literally staggered, could only respond with a thousand-year stare of disbelief. The shot was a cherry on top of this match’s very rich cake.

Unlike his title last week in Vienna, Murray didn’t win this one by attacking non-stop; he won, as he said later, by “playing well in the right moments.” He won be refusing to lose. He won because, after five fall events and two other titles, he’s simply in the habit of winning. We talk a lot these days about how the sport needs to be sped up; this battle showed how much the baseline game, played to the hilt, with no corner of the court left uncovered, can offer.

Robredo flipped Murray off when it was over. But he seemed to take satisfaction in having been a part of the action. The Spaniard summed it up best afterward.

“It was an amazing match, and you have to enjoy it. Unfortunately, someone has to win.”