Maybe we’ve been telling ourselves the wrong story about his rivalry with Rafael Nadal.
The start of a new tennis season prompts an inevitable question: Could this be Roger Federer’s last year on the court? It is a possibility that fills Federer partisans with something approaching existential dread — fear that the un-Federered life might not be worth living, or at least won’t be nearly as pleasurable. Federer is 38, and although he is still at the top of the game — he is currently ranked third — and a threat to win any tournament that he enters, retirement surely can’t be too far off now.
But as the 2020 season gets underway, Federer fans have something else to fret about. At some point this year, Rafael Nadal is likely to equal and maybe even surpass Federer’s foremost achievement, a record 20 Grand Slam singles titles. Nadal’s victory at last year’s United States Open was his 19th major title. He will get his first chance to reach 20 at the Australian Open in Melbourne, which starts this week.
If not there, and assuming Federer doesn’t win the Australian, Nadal will probably tie the record at the French Open in June. Nadal on clay in Paris remains the surest money in sports — he has captured that Grand Slam a dozen times. Because he is about five years younger than Federer, it seems almost certain now that he will finish his career with more majors, which will arguably give him a stronger claim to being the “greatest (male player) of all time” — the GOAT, to use the popular acronym.
That is not how this story was supposed to end. Or maybe we’ve been telling ourselves the wrong story.
When Nadal emerged in the mid-2000s, Federer was dominating men’s tennis, and already a consensus was forming that he was the most talented player ever to have picked up a racket. It was also widely agreed that in order for him to fully realize his potential, he needed an opponent who would seriously push him. Nadal, then just a shaggy-haired teenager from Majorca who liked to play in sleeveless shirts and pirate pants, became the designated foil. Here, at last, was a challenger who would help Federer fulfill his destiny.
Writing about the 2006 Wimbledon final between Federer and Nadal, the novelist David Foster Wallace said the match had a “king-versus-regicide dynamic,” an observation that was rooted in a basic fact — Federer was the three-time defending champion — but that also underscored how the rivalry was perceived.
From the outset, however, it was clear that Nadal wasn’t necessarily going to play the role he had been assigned. He beat Federer the first time they faced each other, at the Miami Open in 2004, then beat him five of the next six times, establishing a head-to-head lead that he has never relinquished.
A rivalry that refused to conform to expectations grew vastly more complicated when Nadal dethroned Federer at Wimbledon in 2008, a nearly five-hour epic that many consider the greatest match ever played. In early 2009, Nadal beat Federer to win the Australian. Federer broke down during the trophy ceremony, saying through his tears, “God, it’s killing me,” a poignant indication of just how much the script had flipped.
Nadal was supposed to make Federer better, not make him cry.
But in June 2009, Federer won his only French Open (taking advantage of Nadal’s shocking fourth-round loss in Paris), and he reclaimed his Wimbledon title the following month. That victory was his 15th major, breaking the record held by Pete Sampras. Nadal had just six majors at that point (I’m using “just” ironically), and Federer’s record seemed safely out of reach. Had you walked into the media center at Wimbledon that Sunday afternoon and predicted that Federer and Nadal would still be playing in 2020, and that Federer would have 20 majors and Nadal would be just one behind him, you would have been laughed out of the room and urged to lay off the Pimm’s Cup.
It’s possible that Nadal won’t win another major, and possible, too, that Federer could add to his haul. Last July, Federer had two match points on his serve against Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final. He failed to convert either and went on to lose, a blown opportunity with potentially historic ramifications (and that will forever torment Federer fans). But if he came that close just six months ago, he is clearly still capable of winning majors.
Even so, it appears likely now that Nadal will retire with more majors than Federer, as well as with a commanding head-to-head record (currently, it’s 24-16 in Nadal’s favor). If that is the case, it will be hard to deny that Nadal has the stronger claim to the GOAT label.
It will also be difficult to avoid concluding that we misjudged the rivalry from its inception and placed the crown on the wrong head. Some Federer fans will claim that Nadal’s indomitability on clay has skewed the numbers, and that’s true — in addition to all those French Opens, many of his other wins over Federer have come on clay. But clay is tennis’s most demanding surface, so it could just as easily be argued that Nadal’s clay court prowess bolsters the case for him.
And if you are a Federer loyalist, Nadal isn’t your only source of angst. Djokovic now holds 16 majors, has winning records against both Federer and Nadal, and could end up eclipsing them.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Federer said that he expected Nadal and Djokovic to finish with more majors than him. “I think the way it’s going, obviously, Rafa and Novak will win more,” he said. “Now, at the end, if somebody else would pass you, I mean, I guess it’s O.K., because that’s what sports is all about. It’s a lot about numbers.”
This equanimity is probably not shared by many of his fans. For those who worship Federer, the idea that he may go down as the second-best or even (shudder) third-best player of this era is painful to contemplate. I know that because — full disclosure — I count myself among the Federer faithful and am struggling to reconcile what my eyes have witnessed during the past two decades with what the statistics indicate.
And here’s where I will take issue just slightly with Federer: Yes, it’s a lot about numbers. But there are certain things that the numbers can’t convey. They won’t show that Federer played tennis more beautifully than it has ever been played, or that during his career he was the world’s most adored athlete, revered for the elegance of his game and his graciousness on and off the court. Without intending to downplay the significance of wins and losses and Grand Slam titles, those aspects of his legacy will ultimately matter more and prove to be more enduring.
Of course, if Federer feels like winning a few more majors just to cushion his lead, we won’t complain.
Michael Steinberger (@WineDiarist) is a regular contributor to The Times Magazine.
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