By Will Carlin
This past July, Roger Federer played Rafael Nadal in the finals of Wimbledon. Going into the match, Federer had lost to Nadal in four consecutive finals, including the French Open. Many people were starting to say that it is hard to anoint Federer as one the best of all time when he might not be the best in his own time. Wimbledon, however, was supposed to be Federer’s stage, and he was the prohibitive favorite.
As the match went on, though, it became clear that Federer was locked in the toughest test of his Wimbledon reign. He had led two sets to one, but Nadal seized control in the fourth set and won it going away, 6-2. At 1-1 and 2-2 in the fifth set, Nadal looked close to breaking open the match as he got double break points in each of those games. But Federer held his serve both times and suddenly engineered two breaks of his own to win the five-set epic.
A few moments after shaking hands, he started to cry. By the time he was back in his chair, he couldn’t get control of himself, and the tears that already were flowing started to turn into sobs. It only lasted for a few moments, as he won his battle to regain composure, but it was there.
What was going on? Tears of joy? Perhaps, but what exactly does that mean? In an article in the Melbourne newspaper, The Age, a few years ago, Mark Fuller interviewed Dr Harriet Speed, a sports psychologist who works for the Victorian Institute of Sport, and she said the following:
“If you think of an athlete during a tennis match… it’s really not appropriate for them to be highly emotional during their competition because they’ve got to focus on other things, important aspects of the competition. To be releasing emotion all the time during a game really would be quite distracting and probably detrimental to performance. But you’ve still got that emotion building up during a game, you still get frustrated with umpires, you still get frustrated with things that you might not be doing, you still feel very happy when you make a good shot… So what happens at the end? It’s like the pot boils over, there’s so much pent up.”
I have cried after six of my own matches, and despite blowing big matches numerous times, none of them was after a loss. There also have been times when everything seemed to flow (athletes typically call it being in the “zone”) and the game seemed almost easy. Afterwards, there was happiness—maybe even joy—but no tears. Not even close. The matches that caused me to break down, in contrast, were wins filled with both internal and external obstacles.
One of them was during the try-outs for the US team. My opponent had been playing very well coming into the match, and I was nervous. Near the start of the match, my opponent realized that by doing a maneuver sometimes called “hook and hold” (where your opponent prepares his racquet early, and if you hit it to the front of the court, he goes around you in such a way as to get his racquet arm hooked around you, and then calls let), the referee was going to grant him a let on almost anything short. Sometimes, in fact, he got strokes on drop shots I thought were winners.
I got increasingly frustrated, distracted, nervous and annoyed. As the long match wound its way into the fifth game, I also started to get tired. The first half dozen points of the final game were played no fewer than three times each, all of the lets called by my opponent. He was tired, too, and as his lets became more and more desperate, he started calling for the ref to penalize me for lack of effort to clear. Eventually, he did.
I remember feeling as if I had taken a physical blow. How could I fight them both? I thought, and the fatigue that I had kept in abeyance suddenly flowed over me. I actually remember momentarily feeling like my knees would buckle. But somehow I steeled myself, fought through the end and won the game, 9-6.
I walked off the court and completely broke down. It was, I’m sure, exactly the release that Dr. Speed was talking about; there is no question that I was stressed and fatigued, and I had been holding it in over the course of a long match, but there was also something else: I had run through a gauntlet that tested me physically and emotionally, and I had made it through to the other side. I have always been tough on myself on the court, but I remember feeling proud. I sat on the bench, put my head under my towel and bawled for a few minutes; then I tucked away the match as one to remember.
When Federer plays, he often wins against even talented opponents so easily that writers often describe watching him play as an example of promise fulfilled. But when he faced the battle that he did in the Wimbledon final—a battle against a worthy opponent, where everything somehow seemed stacked against him, including himself—and he somehow fought through it and won the match, I marveled at him and wondered how he felt at that moment. Then I saw his tears turn to sobs and the towel go over his head, and with tears welling in my own eyes, I felt—as presumptuous as it sounds—that I actually knew, just for a moment, exactly how he felt.
