Long after they finish whipping topspin forehands for a living, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will share a link to Centre Court.
It is the tennis nostalgia factory yet still essential place where Nadal beat Federer in the 2008 final that belongs on anyone’s shortlist of the greatest matches ever played.
However, the classic rivals’ Wimbledon roads and fortunes continue to diverge with the latest evidence on show on Thursday.
Photo: Reuters
Federer, with his 34th birthday approaching, did another bravado impression of his dominant days at the All England Club to overwhelm Sam Querrey. Next on court, Nadal went down in another early-round defeat to a player with a ranking in triple digits.
After Lukas Rosol in 2012, Steve Darcis in 2013 and Nick Kyrgios last year, it was Dustin Brown, a journeyman from Germany with deep links to Jamaica, who took the star turn at Nadal’s expense.
A stock list of verbs is deployed when a big name gets knocked out early at Wimbledon: stunned, ambushed, shocked and onward into hyperbole. At this stage, in light of Nadal’s recent Wimbledons and his shaky form over the past year, it was no longer a genuine shock to see him go down in the second round.
Photo: AP
However, there was no doubt that Brown’s performance in a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory was a stunner as he attacked the net with enough brio and skill to leave former Wimbledon champions like John McEnroe struggling to come up with superlatives.
Serve and volley — even in the grand old days — was perhaps never as spectacular or airborne as this.
“It was great to be able to do it that today and do it for that long,” Brown said.
Long dreadlocks flying around his face after he hit his high-risk shots, he was a man with a plan, and he smartly stuck by it: pushing into the forecourt that has so often stayed virgin green in recent years during the first week.
He played his own service games at a breakneck pace that was quite a contrast with Nadal’s on his own. There were leaping, double-handed backhand volley winners, overheads and deft half-volley drop shots that forced Nadal to stay closer to the baseline than usual to give himself a chance to react in time.
Nadal, a player who loves to invest himself physically and emotionally in a rally, was ultimately left with too little time and too little rhythm to get back on song.
“I didn’t hit three balls in a row the same way,” he said, looking particularly drained, particularly blue, in the aftermath. “Then when you need to hit that ball, that extra ball, you don’t have the confidence to do it.”
“He was not a comfortable opponent for me, but to do big things you have to be ready for every type of opponent and I was not ready enough,” Nadal said. “He played a great match.”
The surprise was that Brown did not show more self-doubt of his own: He closed out the match with a cocksure service hold and a sliced ace after Nadal saved two match points in the previous game.
Brown is No. 102 in the world, aged 30 and until Thursday still unable to afford a full-time coach, but his flashy game is beautifully suited to grass and he also had the belief that came with beating Lleyton Hewitt in the second round at Wimbledon in 2013 and, above all, of beating Nadal in straight sets on the surface in their only previous meeting, last year in Halle, Germany.
Brown and Alex Corretja, the now-retired Spaniard, are the only men to be 2-0 against Nadal, who has winning records against all the great champions of his era, including — by a 23-10 margin — Federer.
However, the losses and doubts are piling up and Nadal, No. 1 in the world a year ago, was seeded just 10th at this Wimbledon after failing to win a European clay-court tournament for the first time since the Mesozoic Era and after losing in straight sets in the French Open quarter-finals to Novak Djokovic.
On a gloomy day, Nadal still managed to joke that his rented house in Wimbledon would now be available if anyone wished to use it.
However, Federer’s remains occupied, at least for now.
You never know quite what to expect at this stage of the game. Not at age 33 with a trick back and a little less foot speed and that nagging third-round loss to Andreas Seppi at this year’s Australian Open still stuck in the memory bank.
Full-flight Federer is always worth the wait and there it was against Querrey, a powerful and pleasant-mannered Californian.
For about 25 minutes, Querrey was Federer’s opponent. However, after Federer broke him at 4-4 in the opening set, Querrey rapidly became the Swiss star’s canvas: A bold backhand brush stroke here, a dab of a half-volley winner there and most avant-garde of all, a lob hit facing forward between the legs.
Small wonder that the canvas is also where Querrey ended up after losing by 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 in the second round in just 1 hour, 26 minutes.
“Today was definitely a good day,” Federer said.
Many a hardworking tennis professional has been given the full Federer treatment through the years. It is different than mere defeat in that it requires that rare higher place where the result is eclipsed by the aesthetic experience.
“You want to go over and give him a high-five sometimes, but you can’t do that,” Querrey said, shaking his head amid the laughter.
Federer, ranked and seeded second, does have his down days: See Seppi in Australia; see Kyrgios in Madrid. Nor is Thursday’s brilliance any guarantee that he will be brilliant enough to stave off a letdown or to summon a way to break his historical tie with Pete Sampras and win his eighth Wimbledon singles title.
Best then simply to appreciate the day’s performance art and marvel at a champion who has won it all — except an Olympic gold medal in singles — being able to find the energy and inspiration to play tennis for an hour or so in a manner that was every bit as convincing as the stuff he brought to Wimbledon in his gold-trimmed blazer days.
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