Roger Alton Roger Alton

Sport: Serena is shining like never before

The comic book Asterix in Switzerland is full of joys, not least the many jokes about Swiss obsessions with tidiness and bureaucracy. Watching the Basel Open last week, the audience was a treat. Immaculate of course, with giant glasses, and cashmere V-necks looped over the shoulders, and doubtless trading assets between matches over hot chocolate and a strudel.

But even his home-town crowd and all the UBS credit cards in the Alps couldn’t lift the greatest Swiss of all to take what would have been only his second title of the year. Roger Federer was outgunned in the final by Juan Martin del Potro, having just squeaked past a rangy young Canadian called Vasek Pospisil (no, me neither), ranked about 40, in the semis.

The same day Federer lost to the Argentinian, over in Istanbul Serena Williams was beating Li Na in the final of the WTA championships. Compare and contrast: both these great players are 32, and both have won 17 grand slam singles titles, but while Serena has had the best year of her career, Federer has had the worst. He hasn’t managed to make any grand slam final, has won only one title (in Halle), and has only reached two other finals (including Basel).

His achievements of course are awesome, but among those who have beaten him over the year are such journeymen as Julien Benneteau (world no. 39, at Rotterdam), Federico Delbonis (world no. 114, in Hamburg), and most notably Sergiy Stakhovsky (world no. 116, at Wimbledon, which dropped Federer out of the top four for the first time since 2003). His qualification for next week’s World Tour finals shouldn’t have gone to the wire, and it might not be long before he’s not even the best player in Switzerland.

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