The Master by Christopher Clarey

The Master by Christopher Clarey

Author:Christopher Clarey [Clarey, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-24T00:00:00+00:00


Greatest match of all time? Do we truly have to decide? Borg’s five-set victory over McEnroe in the 1980 Wimbledon final really should not be dismissed. It, too, was lefty versus righty, and a greater contrast in character and style with much more net play than baseline play, which will always be quintessential Wimbledon for my generation and those that preceded ours.

McEnroe called Nadal and Federer’s duel “the best match I’ve ever seen.” But McEnroe was clearly too busy playing in that 1980 final to be able to judge its comparative merits. McEnroe saved seven championship points, four more than Federer: five of them in the tiebreaker, which he won 18–16 to force a fifth set. Though many of the service games in the fifth were lopsided, it did end with a cocksure backhand passing shot winner from Borg while Federer and Nadal’s duel finished, unfittingly, with an edgy error.

For staying power and titanic mental strength, Djokovic’s nearly six-hour victory over Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open also deserves some love. For unrelenting emotion and sentimental payoff, I have a soft spot for Goran Ivanišević’s five-set victory over Patrick Rafter in the 2001 Wimbledon final on a People’s Monday, when the hoi polloi got to experience Centre Court. But I know that is the heart, not the head, talking.

What seems clear is that the greatest match cannot be played in isolation. It needs an extended buildup and a killer backstory, and then it needs, of course, to be a suspenseful, smack-yourself-in-the-forehead spectacle that expands the conception of what humans can do with a racket in hand.

Take your pick if you must. I would go with Borg-McEnroe if you boxed me in, but this is all out-of-the-arena chatter. A match like the 1980 Wimbledon final or 2008 Wimbledon final is also about what happens next.

To watch Borg and McEnroe share a laugh and a knowing look more than forty years after their duel is a reflection of the bond it formed between them. Their rivalry was just beginning in 1980, but it did not have long to run with Borg walking away from the sport the following year after McEnroe solved the riddle of Borg in the Wimbledon and US Open finals. In all, they played over a span of just four seasons.

Federer versus Nadal endured long enough to become deeply embedded in the landscape, an institution. Their 2008 duel was much closer to the start than the finish on their competitive timeline. But as empaths, Nadal and Federer could sense how much that match deep into the twilight touched others and how much it touched them both, too. It will, I suspect, give them occasion to come together long into the future, just as they did in the winter of 2016 when Federer made another trip to Mallorca for an event that was nowhere near as surreal as the Battle of Surfaces.

Both he and Nadal were recovering from injuries, and Nadal, after considerable effort and investment, was formally opening his tennis academy in Manacor.



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