While listening to Roger Federer in his exciting speech at Darmouth University, one sentence caught my attention and I couldn’t help but smile. A smile of satisfaction, because his words echoed a sentence uttered a long time ago by a certain Ivan Lendl, my own “GOAT”.
In 2018, to celebrate its tenth anniversary, we devoted a long format to the memorable Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. A remarkable match if ever there was one. When we mentioned the start of this final, we wrote this:
Ivan Lendl once said: “In tennis there are two important points. The first and the last.” On this day, Rafael Nadal will win them both. This first point is already Dantesque. Fourteen ball strikes, of unusual intensity for a start and, at the finish, a long line forehand from the Majorcan, as rounded as it is powerful, which falls like a dead leaf weighted with lead on the line. “The first point is always important, especially in a Wimbledon final,” Nadal wrote in his autobiography, as if to confirm Lendl’s words. This inaugural exchange already says everything about this emerging finale, outlining both the harshness of the fight and its outcome.
When you lose every other point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot
If you listen a little absent-mindedly or read too quickly, you can find that there is a cream-pie side to Lendl’s words. The first point, after all, is just a point. Dozens and dozens more are to come and each will bring in as much as the last. But tennis, we too often forget, is above all a combat sport. He is not only that, but he is first and foremost that, especially at the highest level, even more so in a Grand Slam final between the two best players in the world. “Tennis is boxing without the blood“, according to the famous expression of American journalist Bud Collins.
It’s fascinating because, in his speech, Federer largely emphasizes another… point. “Tennishe said, perfection is impossible. Out of the 1526 matches I have played in my career, I have won almost 80% of them. What percentage of points do you think I won? Only 54%. Even the highest ranked players earn just over half of the points they play. When you lose every other point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You learn to think: Okay, I made a double mistake. It’s just a point.”
However, the same Federer, in the same speech, explains that he somehow understood that this 2008 Wimbledon final escaped him from this first point. This may seem absurd. That day, he and Nadal had battled for nearly five hours on the court, not to mention the hours spent in the locker room waiting for the rain to end.
“Rafa won the first two sets, I won the next two sets, and we found ourselves at 7-7 in the fifth, he recalls. I understand why people focus on the end, the final minutes so dark I could barely see the chalk on the turf. But looking back, I feel like I lost from the first point.”
“Sinner is indeed the best player since the start of the season”
Theory and practise
Because this first exchange, in all its harshness, had immediately placed the two champions at the heart of the fight. Nadal, by winning this first skirmish, had won much more than a point. He had marked his territory and the mind of his rival. “I looked on the other side of the net, continues the Swiss, and I saw a guy who, a few weeks earlier, had crushed me at Roland-Garros, and I thought: ‘Maybe this guy is hungrier than me…’ I had to wait the third set to remind myself: Oh, man, you’re a five-time title holder! And we play on grass. You know what you have to do…’ But it was too late and Rafa won. And it was deserved.“
So, which Federer should we believe? The one who, in a theoretical way, insists on the fact that one point constantly chases another and that we must constantly find the strength to move on to the next? Or the one who says he is convinced that everything was almost over from the first point of a final lasting almost five hours? Both, my captain, and it’s much less contradictory than it seems.
If tennis is also “brutal” (dixit Federer) on the mental level, it is that in addition to being a psychological struggle between two adversaries, and perhaps even before that, it is first of all an incessant fight against oneself- Even fighting against your frustrations, your failures, while dealing with your constant need for perfection, is an essential prerequisite. Acceptance of your own imperfection, and therefore of your failures.
Players know this but theory sometimes clashes with practice. Then a point suddenly finds itself weighed down with a greater weight. To the point of weighing on the following point(s). Sometimes even on the outcome of a match. Yes, even when he is only the very first. Especially when he’s the first.
