Whatever the outcome Sunday in the final, Nadal played the match of his career to get there. During the five hour and fourteen minute master class--the longest in the history of this tournament--his countryman and fellow left-hander hit ninety-five winners, scrambled on defense like a burning rabbit, served with paramilitary power, and withstood the burden of an ailing body and a doubtful mind to push the best player in the world to, and beyond, his limit, and still Nadal beat him. After what proved to be the point of the tournament, Patrick McEnroe, not yet recovered from the rally, cried out, "This is absurd tennis!" Moments later, returning to that bon-mot of unreason, he described the effort of both men as "absurdly extraordinary." When the match finally did end, watching the pale, adrenaline-sick Spaniards meet at the net and embrace, I thought, this is the worst possible thing that could have happened. Now Nadal has nothing left for Federer; he can't recover in time. Then, after Brad Gilbert--even he had converted--admitted that this semifinal exceeded even the legendary Safin-Federer clash from 2005, on the same court, no less, both in quality of play (cleanness) and in depth of feeling (inventiveness), I realized that even if Nadal, by some miracle, does regain his strength in time for the final and does clinch the title, the less historically significant win over Verdasco will still mean more to him, and to me, both aesthetically and professionally, than his first hardcourt Slam championship. Titles come and go, and every year, as seasonal as the sun, someone must win. But pure tennis, the kind that refines and transcends the category to which it belongs and which, in its fulfillment, it comes to define, happens only when necessary, only when we, and the sport, and its competitors have by accident or design forgotten ourselves, our fiction, and our partisanship and accepted this great gift that we do nothing to deserve. This match wasn't just good tennis; good tennis strikes from the spark of two talents any time their mutual heat, combusted by dispute, spreads from their personal recesses to catch in the impersonal heart of the audience. This match was not good tennis; it was what good tennis is for.It is also the reason I prefer Nadal to Federer. Every year since he first entered the Australian Open in 2005, Nadal has improved there by one round. Federer has not. Nadal has studied, worked with, and adapted to a surface entirely unsuited to his game, so that now he is, on that surface, one of the sport's strongest and most consistent players. Federer has not. Nadal privileges process over accomplishment, labor over product, action over idea, the earthly human imperfection over its remote celestial counterpart, transigent substance over intransigent form. It is true that Federer makes tennis more beautiful than it ever has been, but Nadal makes it meaningful, and that, to me, is a far more relevant and enduring distinction. I have always been a form-fetishizer; my preference for Nadal, I think, demonstrates just how convincing his game can be.
As far as I'm concerned, the tournament is already over. Sunday will come, when the master of forms will compose another formal masterwork and be appropriately praised for his prodigy. But before we all blind ourselves in its glare, we should remember that the light illuminating that work, like the spectral shadow of the moon, is reflected, an alien fire and a strange, dark intelligence. Before Nadal matured into a world-class player, Federer was a lonely brilliance, an exception. Now, because of his partnership in this rivalry, he is an interesting and historic sportsman. When he breaks the Sampras record, as he surely will, his feat will be more compelling because of, not despite, his losing record against Nadal. History has no quantitative measure; fourteen or fifty Major titles does not make the greatest player of all time. There are no greatest players, only great moments. When Federer dismantles Roddick or Blake or any other top ten player, we marvel at his ability but we don't gain anything by it. We are too far removed to relate to it in any way except reverence. Against Nadal, because it is tested, his genius means something. Those moments stay with us and become some of the many landmarks of our lives.
In some ways, this match recalls, but contravenes, the equally remarkable semifinal between Federer and Roddick, a contest as cruel and incandescent as any I've seen. Federer controlled his opponent with an authority that hinted at displeasure; he took no pleasure in the contest, only ( if he took pleasure in anything) in winning it. Federer delights in the myth that surrounds his genius, and when, as it must, that myth decays into fact, his gracious smile and gentle voice turn scornful and mean. When he lost Wimbledon, Federer, for the first time that I know of in his career, made excuses, blamed extraneous factors, and plain bitched. When bookies named Andy Murray the favorite to win the Australian Open, pointing to his recent 4-0 record against Federer, the Swiss ambassador scoffed, retorting, "Well, maybe, but I win when it counts." When Djokovic retired against Roddick earlier this week, Federer criticized, "If you aren't healthy enough to play in these conditions, go home."
There is a pettiness and egotism in Federer obscured both by the elegance of his play and by the quiet politics of his personality. Nadal is a simpler man, and a humbler one, and while it is true that competition is not a moral exercise, when formal mastery makes moral meaning irrelevant, perhaps it is we, and not the objective value of our expertise, that wants refinement. We complain, defensively, that competition is a natural and indifferent enterprise. But so is every other cruelty. We do not make appeals to natural law so readily in other, more ubiquitous forms of competition, as, for example, the competition between predator and prey, provided, of course, that the prey is a human being.
This is all very subjective, and I admit that I have my bias, but let me add, if it means anything, that after watching the Federer-Roddick semifinal I felt demoralized: the efficiency and whole impersonal business of the match made me wonder why athletics matters anyway. Seeing its excellence, I questioned its worth. That reaction seems unhealthy to me, and true, it may be idiosyncratic and probably is a kind of prejudice, but after watching Nadal and Verdasco, I felt confirmed and even inspired by their performance, not because my favorite player had won--I can say comfortably that by the end of the match, neither player had really won, and that the very idea of winning or losing no longer mattered--but because the two struggling fortunes on court had increased the scope and significance of their contest so that it included, like a literary symbol, each part of which it was representative, and I, however incidental, by the composite quality of that act participated in what I love, for although their match was nearly perfect, Nadal and Verdasco played generously, not merely perfectly, and their sympathy for the consequences of sport brought a valuable democratic ethic to their competition.
The more I think about perfection the less I value it. Because it is intolerant, as Auden mistakenly excised from his elegy, we work to transcend time, expecting that its indifference will turn to moral interest as we learn to exceed its categories. But time and limitation teach us to love deliberately, to think clearly, and to feel purposefully. What can civilize us but our end and our imperfection?
You can have your Federers and the pseudo-Apollonian rhapsodes who exalt him. I like the unpredictable element, the untuned instrument, the intuitive artist, whose panegyric is memory, not civic ceremony, and who creates for the pleasure of creation and not for the fluid value of its commerce. What the first earns by contest is victory; what the second earns by play is play, its queer, irreplaceable danger. By all objective measures, Federer is the superior player. But by all intangible virtues, Nadal is the better man, and not an inferior player by very much, or for very long. So for you, Slothrop, and whoever else favors the flawless, justifying an easy admiration for the perfect with sophistical encomia of the invisible, take notice:
It will take more than anger,
It will take patience to force
The lungs of authority
With the fine deadly powder
Ground by those with the know-how,
The precionists, like you.
Enjoy the final on Sunday, if you can rouse yourselves from sleep at 3:30am and abide Chris Fowler's insufferable commentary. If you can't, enjoy the cold mantle of perfection as Federer (probably) wins his fourteenth Major title, tying Pete Sampras's record and guaranteeing countless hours of senseless banter from industry tools like Fowler, Gilbert, and bow-tie wearing Bud Collins. At least defeat is an unspoken achievement.
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