It’s been a crazy Wimbledon Championships this year what with several seeds being toppled already. Rafael Nadal fell in the first round, Maria Sharapova and Roger Federer in the second on a calamitous Wednesday that had aficionados diving into tennis history to find out whether there had ever been such a day.
Probably not. There is a mathematical process to seeding players — based on consistency of performance on various surfaces in different tournaments — that has stood the test of time rather well. When you get the kind of results that have been obtained this year, it’s irrational: of madness having overcome method.
That said, upset results always are newsworthy. This is even more relevant in the men’s section which has for the past few years enjoyed a terrific surge because of four top-notch players — Federer, Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray — vying for top honours.
How come Nadal, for instance, who won the French Open for the eighth time only a few weeks earlier, was bundled off so easily? Remember he lost in the second round last year, so is he vulnerable on grass despite the fact that he has won at Wimbledon earlier?
And Roger Federer? At 31, are his best days behind him or this is a lean trot? Since 2010, he has won only two Grand Slam titles. In a decade at Wimbledon, which has been second home for him, he has never failed to reach the last four. Put curtly, the question is should Federer quit?
It’s a question that has vexed tennis followers more than the maestro himself. The seven-time champion made it clear in his post-defeat press conference that he intended to play ‘many years more’. Is this the self-belief of a champion or the adamancy of a sports superstar unwilling to come to terms with reality?
The debate over Federer is redolent of the one that has raged over Sachin Tendulkar in Indian cricket for a while now. Both enjoy an exalted status in their respective sports, form a mutual admiration club (will Tendulkar go to Wimbledon this year now that Federer is out?) and have been somewhat below par in recent times.
Like Federer, Tendulkar too says he is enjoying the game and believes that he still has something to contribute. At 40, he obviously knows that his best years are behind him, but the urge to play and compete still fires him up.
The parallel between Federer and Tendulkar is well-founded in one aspect, not so clear at another. For instance, when Federer plays a grand Slam or ATP event, he does so as an individual. His form and performance matter only to him, unlike in cricket where what Tendulkar does has direct impact on how the team fare.
The equation for Federer, of course, changes when he has to play Davis Cup. Here, he becomes part of the team and it is the collective effort of several players that determine the outcome.
Fact is, retirement is not an easy decision in any walk of life, even more so in sport, and manifold more difficult when you are widely regarded as the best. It’s an existential issue, not of numbers and age. The crux of the matter according to me is that the decision to retire or not is solely the prerogative of the player concerned. We may have opinions, but it seems supercilious in the extreme to foist these on players.
Several top cricketers have continued playing first class cricket after retiring from Tests or tennis players after losing their top ranking because they loved the game. To insist that Federer or Tendulkar must quit when we want them to is a foolish combination of emotional blackmail and puerile logic.
The crux of the matter lies in an equation that is fragile, yet critical: Whether a player is chosen or not (in a team sport, or even for individuals in events like the Olympics) vests in the selectors. The onus on a player is to perform at his best. The job of the selector is to decide whether the player’s best is good enough.
In shifting the onus of the selectors on to the player is the problem.