Open House: Federer in Autumn

Gerry Marzorati: Morning, Michael. So this is it — though the “it” isn’t exactly what we expected, which is not to say it isn’t more momentous than we expected. In the slanty-sun and dark shade of Ashe late yesterday afternoon — the light evoked World Series games, which seems appropriate enough — the world of men’s tennis reached an inflection point, as we now like to say. What was before gave way. You know something is happening, and you do know what it is.

Roger Federer will not be in a U.S. Open final for the first time since 2003 (which Andy Roddick won). And this is the first year since 2005 that Federer failed to reach three Grand Slams finals. Meanwhile, this is the first year that Rafael Nadal reached the Open final, having already won the French and Wimbledon.

It is entirely possible that there will never be another Federer-Nadal Slam final, or final of any kind. It is expected that Nadal will defeat Novak Djokovic, Federer’s conqueror in five sets, today in the men’s final.

If Nadal’s knees hold up, it is hard to see how Federer will ever again challenge the Spaniard’s position as the No. 1 player in the world. New era. But it is so hard to watch Federer fade. I completely identified with the anxiety felt by Calvin Tomkins, who in a recent New Yorker profile expressed how difficult it is watching Fed lose a point, game, set or, once seemingly rare, match. It’s not the same Fed from David Foster Wallace’s seminal piece in Play magazine four years ago.

There is something about Federer playing poorly or being bested that upsets your sense of Cartesian orderliness. It’s not that I ever rooted for Federer the way I root for the football Giants. I am a rabid Giants fan who schedules nothing for afternoons and evenings they play, and who calls my 81-year-old dad after every game, win or lose, to discuss. I don’t care how they win. I simply want the W.

But rooting for Federer has meant rooting for beauty and greatness, and that’s why we wanted a Federer-Nadal final — to see Federer’s game challenged and raised one more time by the player who has done that most consistently. We did get that in the fifth set of yesterday’s semifinal, didn’t we?

But are we likely, Michael, to see such a thing on men’s tennis any time soon? Do you see among the current crop of players anything that might become what Federer-Nadal has come to mean?

Michael Kimmelman: Games, matches have their turning points — or as you put it, inflections. So do careers, eras. You can often only see them in retrospect. I agree that yesterday’s match may come to be seen as a passing of generations.

It was beautiful but a little sad, too. I thought about Federer’s loss at Wimbledon to Nadal, then to his loss to Del Potro here last year. Now this. At 29, of course he’s still an amazement and probably has a few more big victories in him. But his career, like your summer sun passing into the autumn shadows, has clearly begun to fade.

Let’s be grateful. Federer-Djokovic was some match, the best of the tournament, probably of the year — for two weeks, what we’d been waiting for. But let’s admit that Roger played erratic, often messy tennis, missing a slew of first serves, making 66 unforced errors (compared with 48 winners) and looking as if he’d gone to lunch during the second and fourth sets.

That said, Djokovic, save for the three shaky service games he dropped in the first and third sets, dominated the first four sets, played magnificently in the fifth and made Federer press, miss or have to produce magic to win every point. The Djokovic who had played the brittle, jokey third wheel to the Great Men, the guy known to complain, cave in the crunch and make way for Federer or Nadal, gave the lie to that never-quite-fair reputation.

I became a fan yesterday. He showed himself to be, as Federer used to be, a player who would not yield, who came up with incredible shots under the greatest pressure — hitting that swinging volley then that unreturnable forehand to thwart two match points. Great stuff. When they had both risen to wild heights, it was Djokovic who kept frustrating Federer. Shots Federer would have won against almost any other player came rocketing back. You sensed his frustration. Djokovic did to him what Nadal does — what Federer himself used to do to everyone else.

Think about how important that Wimbledon victory in 2008 was for Nadal. He had lost to Roger in two straight finals. He felt devastated after the second loss. Had he lost again, as a writer friend of mine speculated with me yesterday, who knows what toll it might have taken. But he won and has evolved into a more and more versatile and unbeatable champion. Djokovic also was knocking on the Open door year after year. But now he’s finally past Federer and through to the final and he’s No. 2 in the world again. Had Roger won, he could have ended the year as No. 1. Instead he falls to No. 3.

There’s your fork in the road, your inflection, however fleeting or minor it may seem, and for those of us no longer 23 like Novak or 24 like Rafa, it accounts for the melancholy of seeing a 29-year-old genius at his craft give way to life’s inevitable changes.

I have always loved watching Federer, been awestruck by the complexity and elegance of his game, felt privileged to have followed the Open when he won it at his peak. Yes, tennis is frivolous. But we rarely get to see anyone do anything so well. And at his best, Federer’s game was (is) almost heartbreakingly beautiful. That accounts for the disturbance we can feel when it goes off, as if — to borrow your metaphor — the order of the world had been ever-so-slightly upset. But it’s heartbreaking to watch, too, because we intuit the fragility of perfection, its evanescence.

I don’t want to mope because Djokovic has emerged, the anti-Federer in his shades-of-Lendl outfits, with his parents wearing what Steve Tignor on Tennis.Com calls those “I-don’t-give-a-damn-if-Anna-Wintour-is-here, my-son-is-awesome T-shirts.” It’s a breath of fresh air. Djokovic has played tough baseline matches against Nadal, which may come to replace the Federer-Nadal matches in the quality of their drama, the way Evert-Navratilova was replaced by Navratilova-Graf. Here’s hoping so. Albeit today, with Djokovic fatigued after yesterday’s struggle — the questionable cost, as readers have noted, of semis and finals on consecutive days — it’s hard to imagine an extended cliffhanger.

G.M.: So what might the Reign of Rafa be? (Certainly more compelling than the women’s game. Should the ticket-holders to last night’s women’s final have been offered a refund after Kim Clijsters’s one-hour victory?)

Ok, we know Nadal has become a great all-court, all-surface player, with a serve that cannot be easily broken. We know he is a sweet, young guy with a real sense of the game’s history. We know that he depends a lot on Uncle Toni — I loved Karen Crouse’s piece on him — and that when he is not playing or practicing tennis, he spends a lot of time with video games.

One thing I noticed during his match with Youzhny yesterday is that he likes being on Rafa Time. He was late getting on court, he continued practicing his serve after the umpire called time, and took an awfully long time to get a blister taped. A little ‘tude, perhaps?

M.K.: Definitely, ‘tude, although I find it impossible not to like Nadal and his game. Isn’t it interesting that while insiders like Nick Bollettieri talk about the hunger of players from former Soviet bloc countries, Nadal comes from a well-to-do Spanish family (partly explaining why Toni can refuse to take a salary for coaching) and Roger comes from a perfectly comfortable Swiss family. But have there ever been hungrier, or greater, players?

And it is another misconception that Rafa and Roger are perfect gentlemen. We know about Roger’s peevishness after losing at Wimbledon and Rafa’s head games — with his delays and injury timeouts, even if they’re really him absorbed in his own world. Then there’s the illegal coaching that Toni provides during matches. Those tactics have gotten to Roger.

That said, I trust the reign of Rafa will be as good — if not as elegant — as the reign of Roger and possibly even more rivalrous. A decade ago (remember?) the game seemed doomed to the boredom of Roddick’s serve, and suddenly along came Roger to revolutionize everything. So you never know. Another revolutionary may already be in the wings. Change happens. There is no end of tennis.