Yesterday, January 27th 2011, Roger Federer lost to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open semifinal, and Marat Safin turned 31. These two things, one might say, are not linked in any manner. But actually, there’s a link between them, and it’s expressed in the title of this post.
In all these years, Marat Safin has been, much more than any Nadal, or Roddick or anyone else, the real alter ego of Roger Federer. The Ying to his Yang, the half of the apple, the negative to his photo; kindred spirits and personalities that life has then brought on completely different paths, but still somehow parallel. And I’m not talking (only) about tennis.
In the end, Marat was everything Roger could have been but he ended up not being, and Roger is everything Marat could have been but ended up not being. Still, they have many things in common.
Both always had to come to terms with extraordinary talents that had to be tamed and minds and personalities not easy to handle.
In the image usually offered by the media, Roger Federer is the perfect swiss robot, elegant and flawless, that doesn’t let any emotion out. In this reconstruction (the greatest misconstruction in the history of tennis), the expressive and engaging (??) Nadal is perfect as his nemesis: the Apollonian versus the Dionysian, foil versus saber, “the passionate machismo of southern Europe versus the intricate clinical artistry of the north” (even David Foster Wallace fell for it, but HE can be forgiven). Sometimes they add to the story the part relating to Roger’s turbulent early years and to his sudden change of attitude on court, which started – it seems – just after a match against Marat, in Rome 2001.
But the story is always missing a fundamental element: ten years and sixteen Majors later, in Roger Federer there’s still that bit (and more) of craziness that characterized him as a boy. Truth is that Roger isn’t only Apollonian, nor he is the Apollonian that has crushed the Dionysian. He is Apollonian and Dionysian together, at the same time. The curls might have replaced (thank God!) the more eccentric platinum hair and the ponytail, but under there, in that little head of his, thoughts run in the same frantic way and the frailties emerge. So it happens that, after he fails to convert a match point in a Slam final, he literally pictures the scene of his opponent taking away the throphy from him (yes, he really thought of that, during last year’s AO final). Cold and emotion-less robot, right? To me, he looks more like the kid who didn’t want to go to the net because he thought there were sharks down there.
Yesterday, in the semi against Djokovic, all of this came out again. ‘Coz you can win everything, you can arrive from some incredible months when you played great, you can have a great coach who looks like he has gotten into your system, but -deep down- that thin streak of craziness and attitude to self-mindfu**ery doesn’t leave you. Some difficulties during the tournament (Gilles Simon, go fu…ehm, sorry…) and a terrible performance with his serve brought everything back to the surface. So Roger played a match that, on top of all, totally lacked lucidity, as well as determination and conviction (I’m not taking anything away from his opponent, though; he played almost perfectly).
Well, more than any trophy or victory, Roger’s greatest achievement to me is in fact this one: to have been able to keep together all the pieces of his personality and of his game, which are both kinda complex. To have not given in to the “Genius and Unruliness” or “beautiful loser” career, that at a certain stage seemed likely for him. To have succeeded in the “miracle” of taming his talent and his mind, probably thanks to his pride, to his will and to his enormous ambition (which, on the other hand, probably failed Marat, to whom – unlike Roger – winning a Slam and reaching the number 1 were the end of something rather than the beginning).
Since all of us, as well as the tennis world and media, live off of simplifications and stereotypes, also Marat was often portrayed in a restrictive and banal way, as the talented bon vivant, womanizer and a little crazy, who often lost his temper. But this image of the lovely and funny show-off it’s not enough to describe him: Marat’s much more than a smashed racquet. He’s a clever, meaningful, eloquent, well-spoken guy, who always approached life and tennis with the right dose of sarcasm and the ironic smile of who (only apparently) seems indifferent to everything, but actually has the intelligence and the curiosity to get interested in everything. His supposed current “heir”, Ernests Gulbis, has the annoying characteristic of doing everything with a flamboyant smugness, but Marat never was like this. The parties, the Safinettes, his often not-so-athletic physical condition, the matches thrown away never meant shallowness or disinterest. The fact that he is a man who enjoys life doesn’t mean he lives it without profundity. On the contrary, everything in him was intense, included his awareness of the fact that he was never able to tame his genius, his talent, his mind. I don’t know whether this consciousness lead to some kind of bitterness or to some sort of incompleteness feeling. For sure I never thought he went through it thoughtlessly.
The day he retired I heard someone saying: “They always say Safin could have achieved more, but in the end he has achieved what he could, with the means –physical and not- he had”. I don’t know if I agree with this, but surely I like to imagine Marat, whatever he’s doing now, happy and at peace with himself.
Exactly 6 years ago, this two head-cases (how else would you define someone who attempts a tweener on a match point of a Grand Slam semifinal?) played the REAL match of the decade.
Therefore, on this Sunday, if you wish to have fun watching two interesting and genius guys, playing sublime tennis on Rod Laver Arena, do yourself a favour: give up the TV and the 2011 Australian Open final, and go in for some healthy, exciting vintage Fedafin:
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