Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
Roger Federer would never use the word. He's too polite, and too much in control of men's tennis at the moment to stoop to such a gritty, guttural taunt. But the word I think of when I savor The Mighty Fed's performance in Shanghai, at the ATP Championships, is
payback.
And, Roger being Roger, I don't mean that he evened some petty personal score or merely lobbed out a big, fat gratuitous "Who's the Man!?!" to his principal rivals (if that's the right word) -- Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, James Blake, et al. TMF, as we know, is bigger than that. The tournament he had last week was payback to the ATP, the Shanghai organizers of the year-end championships, and disgruntled fans worldwide -- all parties who were dismayed last year by the number of players who pulled up injured, or took a pass on competing in what is, theoretically, the most important event of the year after the Grand Slams, and the flagship tournament of the official player's organization.
I'm glad we've got that theme, too, because is isn't a good time to talk about how TMF also set things right after his loss in Shanghai last year to one of the few players who have troubled him in the past, David Nalbandian. We'll let that one go because Nalbandian, a semifinalist last week, suffered a terrible tragedy during the round-robin stage of the event. Halfway around the world from Shanghai, Nalbandian's 9-year-old cousin and godson, Lautaro, was crushed to death in a freak elevator accident.
You might remember that Federer was struggling with a sore foot as the YEC rolled out last year; this time, he could have been mistaken for Mercury, and he had the customary, quicksilver game to go with his fleet court coverage. I can think of only a handful of Open-era players who have played on cat's feet at the highest level of the game, and the names will be familiar to you: Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe and Mats Wilander. By contrast, an Ivan Lendl moved like Lurch and even Pete Sampras appeared to play with more -- if only just more -- effort. Most players run; if they're light and mobile, you think of them as "quick." TMF glides.
Federer's performance was also a warning shot fired across the bow of his rivals for 2007. The message for contenders (including Nalbandian, Marcos Baghdatis, Nikolay Davydenko, Ivan Ljubicic) who haven't won a major yet: Bring your A-game, bring it every time you show up; I couldn't care less what month it is, how long the season is, how much your hammie or your shoulder hurts. I played more matches than almost all of you, and I crushed all comers.
The message for Nadal: You tagged me on clay and slow hard courts earlier this year, but despite your great run at Wimbledon (Nadal got to the finals and lost to TMF), you're going to have to do some serious wrenching if you're going to be an all-seasons threat. The message for Roddick and Blake was simple: Try harder.
The numbers Federer posted for this year are amazing; his overall record of 92-5 represents a career-best one-year winning percentage, and ranks second on the all-time list (John McEnroe narrowly hung on with his 1984 numbers: 82-3, with one title more than TMF's 12) . His greatest achievement this year was the completion of an unprecedented, Wimbledon-U.S Open three-peat.
In the last official tournament match of the year, Federer gave Blake -- a dangerous player on any medium to fast surface -- just seven games, leaving Blake (now 0-6 vs. Federer) to ponder, "What did I ever do to you?"
To which Federer might reply, with a shrug, "You showed up."
