What Federer isn’t

This summer, like so many others in the past decade, belongs to Roger Federer. By reclaiming the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, after giving Andy Murray a set start, the peerless Swiss revealed what true greatness looks like in sporting togs. Seven times a Wimbledon champion, 17 times a winner of Grand Slam events: his record compels not so much admiration as awe, and it will surprise nobody if, next month, he retains the Olympic title he won four years ago.

He is, by general assent, the greatest of all tennis players, standing a cubit taller than Rod Laver, the Australian champion of the Sixties, who was at centre court to witness Federer’s latest achievement. He is certainly the most gracious man ever to swing a racket, which is why so many of us were rooting for him to beat Murray. If you believe that sport is a thing of beauty then you must love Federer, above all other tennis players; indeed, above all other sportsmen. He stands supreme in the way that Pelé once did in football, or Cassius Clay in boxing, or Garry Sobers in cricket. He is one of the blessed.

Yet he is not, as some have written, a genius, which may surprise some of those who flung that word around like confetti when the match had been won. No sooner had Federer collected his prize than Sue Barker, the simpering BBC presenter, who unforgivably calls Murray ‘Andy’, hailed Federer’s ‘genius tennis’. Simon Barnes, the chief sportswriter of the Times, whose superb essays from Wimbledon enhance this great annual tournament, amplified the word in his analysis of the final, and other scribes also made free with it when they were not peppering their copy with ‘sublime’, another word that is best avoided.