Federer

kinetic beauty—risk taking—simple mechanics

It’s been hard to write something on the bloke these past days, partly because others have written what many of us feel better than I ever could, and partly because we live in a time where an endless stream of highlights can be relived as the tennis world celebrated his career. Below are a few curated video links of Federer brilliance.

Backhand flicks, backhand overheads, half volleys (ridiculous/highly recommend), SABRs, passing shots, tweeners, and drop shots.

I thought the best way I could honor the player who made me fall in love with the game was to write a piece that could be revisited over time—a small digital museum of sorts. It’s a bit messy and disjointed, but if you came for the words, I am confident you will stay for the highlights. Of course, I aim to keep this work in line with the spirit of this newsletter and “single out the thread of order from the tapestry” and all of that as best as I can.

I guess I should start by pointing out that any Federer tribute will always fall short of the benchmark in Federer journalism: David Foster Wallace’s Roger Federer as Religious Experience. By virtue of being early (it was written way back in the year of our Fed 2006) and brilliant, Wallace rendered every piece that would follow on the Swiss as derivative. An excerpt (emphasis added):

“Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.

The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.”

Kinetic beauty and risk-taking

It’s not controversial to say that a significant part of Federer’s legacy is cemented in the way he played the game. While his main rivals—Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal—have already eclipsed his grand slam record, die-hard Fed fans cling to his style as the last bastion for his claim to GOAThood.

There is obvious admiration for achieving measured greatness, and most sports are predicated on a simple unit of account (athletics, weightlifting, swimming, etc.). To my knowledge there is little talk of ‘kinetic beauty’ in these disciplines. The goalposts of such events are fixed, and arguing over who is greater is simply a matter of running back the numbers to see who was ‘higher, swifter, stronger.’¹ Other sports just don’t seem compatible with the idea of kinetic beauty because they’re so damn gnarly (looking at you, UFC). Greatness in tennis is complicated by a history of change—surfaces, calendars, and technology have all shifted with time—and apples-to-apples comparison of counting slams between players today and those of prior generations is to fall victim to the modern myopic lens of ‘data’.² This isn’t to say that the discussion is not worthy at all. Gun to the head, I would pick Novak to play for my life. If I could pick the surface and year, it’s obviously 2008 Rafa on clay³ These two eclipsed Federer’s level in the modern baseline age, but fall short of his influence.

Why Federer still commands so much awe is hard to pinpoint. Again from Wallace:

“A top athlete’s beauty is next to impossible to describe directly. Or to evoke. Federer’s forehand is a great liquid whip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load with topspin, or slice — the slice with such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the grass to maybe ankle height. His serve has world-class pace and a degree of placement and variety no one else comes close to; the service motion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive (on TV) only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the moment of impact. His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game — as a child, he was also a soccer prodigy. All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play. Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game. You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not.”

I’ll add that part of his appeal was also the aggressive forecourt nature of his game in an era where, even for casual observers, implicit in that style was a degree of risk that was courageous and admirable.⁴ Wandering from the mode of topspin baseline attrition is usually a sign of fatigue or desperation, but Federer managed to splice power and spin with finesse in a way we hadn't seen before. Looking back, it was always going to fall short of the consistency of Nadal and Djokovic’s baseline games in terms of winning. But crowds care about more than just winning.⁵

Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom Twitter GOAT debates.

There’s a lot of personal preference baked into this ‘beauty’ aspect—some people just don’t give a shit and think it’s all high falutin—but it does seem common in technical disciplines that require a high degree of fine motor control and complex skills. Efficient biomechanics are unnatural—especially in tennis. The instinct is to manipulate everything with the hand while the body is rigid. Ideals are the reverse; quiet hands with a lot of body rotation. The idea of a ‘perfect’ swing is almost an asymptote-like goal, approachable, but never actually touched. Chasing it is like a goal within a goal; a side-quest independent of the ultimate aim, yet instinctively recognized and admired by others when they see it. If you look closely, great players nearly always have this quality in the strong parts of their game—Djokovic’s backhand, Nadal’s forehand, Sampras’ serve. Federer’s greatness is that he flew so close to this ideal while making it look effortless. The feline movement and serene on-court spirit that he played with are unreachable, anointed by nature only.

Anyway, this piece is not meant to be a GOAT argument (although I like having them). It’s a celebration of a great tennis player. A great athlete. It’s also to point out that ‘kinetic beauty’ or the trope of ‘Federer as genius/artist/religious experience' intersects with the technical ideals I have been harping on about here.

Forehands

“It takes a lot of hard work,” Jobs said, “to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.”

At its peak, Federer's forehand was the greatest shot in the game. It’s not an accident that it was also biomechanically very simple at that time. This is the forehand that tennis was obliterated by:

Upright racquet head. Extended wrist. Heavy stick. Around the time he changed to a bigger racquet the take-back got lower to the side. It was shorter, but I think it lacked the timing of this forehand.

It was the simplicity that allowed Federer’s forehand to be so dynamic. He had the ability to roll heavy angles, block returns, and drive flat winners from all positions on the court, and he did so with ruthless efficiency and consistency. Wallace famously described it as a “great liquid whip” and while it certainly was fluid, it was its lack of moving parts that set it apart for me.⁶ Another excerpt from Death of a Forehand - Part I:

As Duane Knudson states in Biomechanical Principles of Tennis Technique, “Decreasing the number of body segments and the extent of their motion will increase the accuracy of the movement.”

But in the modern game, we can’t just decrease movements until we're left with McEnroe-esque bunts and blocks. You still have to have the fundamentals to generate efficient racquet head speed. In fact, in an almost paradoxical quest, with polyester strings like Luxilon you get more control (by virtue of more topspin) the faster you swing. Finding the best way to generate racquet head speed—controllable speed—is essentially what tennis is about.⁷ Build controlled speed and you have great skill. Federer did this better than anyone.

What I think modern tennis (~ last 10 years) has lacked in the top younger players, is this technical control that was the hallmark of the Big-3.⁸ The athleticism and talent are there, but I think it has wavered technically. It was evident in the rallies Sinner and Alcaraz played in their US Open quarterfinal recently. The speed and aggression were astonishing, the highs were as high as ever, but they were liberal with the errors.⁹ In contrast, Nadal and Djokovic place a premium on each rally that is alien to today’s young.¹⁰ At his peak, Federer's controlled aggression once went 109 points without making an unforced error.

Backhands

To say Federer’s backhand was a weakness usually only applied when juxtaposed against the ridiculous ad-sides of Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray.

While most pundits would take Wawrinka, Thiem, or Gasquet’s stock one-hander over Federer, the intangibles were so much better with the Maestro. Once again, in an era of power, it was his variation and control that made it deceptively good (seriously, if you didn’t watch the half volley video from earlier do it here now). Part of my frustration with the younger players today—especially Tsitsipas and Shapovalov as single-handers—is their complete lack of defense on that side; it’s severely underdeveloped. Why I think this is the case I have touched on before here, but I think the slow death of the single-hander will continue into the future. Federer will (likely) be the last all-time great with this shot. If you never saw Federer play live, I think the video below is as close as you can get to understanding the sheer skill and aggression he played with. Note also the backhand variation that he used. This is only practice from Roland Garros a few years ago, but it’s ridiculous tennis worthy of an entry fee.

Rivals

Tennis has been beyond fortunate to have lived through an era with not one, not two, but three generational talents.¹¹ I think Matt Willis, who used to write The Racquet, summed it up well:

Matthew Willis @mattracquet

Probably the core thing that defines a sporting era is the regularity & intensity of its absolute best competitors clashing. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic played an absurd 149(!) matches in that rivalry triangle, almost always as the best players in the world, always high stakes

Matthew Willis @mattracquet

Offering up such a rich sample size of competitive ability is rare when it happens between two great players 30-40 times over the course of an era. When it happens nearly 150 times between the three most successful men’s players of all time, it’s a unicorn era

Matthew Willis @mattracquet

It’s important because the very best competitors clashing so often moves the game forward at a quicker pace. It’s fertiliser for the ways tennis is played. Federer’s part in that relentlessly fierce pinnacle of men’s tennis competition is such an enormous legacy

There’s a handful of points that I will always remember from the Federer-Nadal and Federer-Djokovic rivalries. Some of them are compiled below.

• 2008 Wimbledon Final. 7-7 in the fourth set breaker. Two of the best passing shots back-to-back in one of the greatest matches of all time.

• 2009 AO final between Nadal and Federer. Ridiculous angles and movement.

• 2017 AO final between Nadal and Federer. A clutch point at a time when Federer was thought to be done (both in this match and in his career).

• 2019 Wimbledon final between Federer and Djokovic. Heartbreaking loss for Federer in a match where he won more overall points. Djokovic is a mental giant who weathered Federer and the crowd that day.

• 2016 AO Semi-final between Federer and Djokovic. One of Djokovic’s greatest ever performances. This point came at a time when Federer was trying to just get in this match, and the crowd's reaction was huge as they willed him to a fourth set.

There’s plenty more obviously, but you get the idea. These three were freaks. We were lucky to witness it all. It’s sad it has to end.

When you think about it, it’s ridiculous that we get goosebumps watching players swat a piece of felt-clothed rubber around with a graphite stick. Such emotion is usually reserved for great cinema or music. But that’s why I think sports are more than simply who won; with the application of some arbitrary rules and equipment, two people can conjure magic. The GOAT aspect—the H2H, the titles, the win—is part MacGuffin. What we really love about these athletes are the moments and stories they gave us—the points, the shots, the rivalries. Mementos of an experience.

Federer gave us a lifetime’s worth.

1. I’m pretty ignorant of these events so if there is the Federer equivalent in these disciplines please let me know. I apologize in advance.

2. It deserves a stand-alone piece, but even a quick skim of the history of tennis shows some glaring issues with slam count; Wedged between two calendar grand slams, Rod Laver missed 5 prime years; the Australian Open was often overlooked by a lot of players until the 90s; technology and surface homogenization has made the game less versatile and easier to dominate across the calendar compared to the 90s. I mean, the ITF literally changed the tennis ball to save us from the servebot era. The John Isner’s of the world would probably have multiple slams if things had stayed as they were. All this to say, ‘slam count /thread’ isn’t exactly showcasing your knowledge of the game when arguing who is ‘GOAT’, if that’s your thing.

3. Not in a million parallel universes do I think any player can beat this version of Nadal. In the video during the quarterfinal, Nadal’s opponent, Nicholas Almagro, famously says to his box when down 6-1 4-1: “He’s gonna win Roland Garros 40 times in a row, he’s gonna be 65 and will keep winning Roland Garros.” So far he’s been pretty spon on. In the semi-final and final, Nadal faced Djokovic and Federer. Their combined games tally wasn’t enough to win 3 sets. Nadal dished out twelve—TWELVE—6-1 or 6-0 sets in this tournament.

4. Alcaraz has this quality as well. So does Kyrgios. Crowds love risk-taking.

5. Die-hard Djokovic fans hate this aspect, mainly because he’s had the short end of the popularity stick of the three. In part because he came late to the party, and because he plays the most ‘boring’ style of the three. To clarify: he’s the most balanced and complete modern player in my eyes, but that has come at the expense of ‘entertainment value’ as much of his game is predicated on being solid and forcing errors out of opponents rather than smacking winners.

6. Another part was his set-up. His headlight frame allowed a little more maneuverability that enabled much of the ‘flick factor’ that his game was known for.

7. With polyester strings like Luxilon, you get this paradox where the faster you swing the more control you can get by virtue of more topspin.

8. Many people talk of a shot having a higher “margin of safety” (height over the net) because it has more spin, but fail to recognise that it has usually come at the expense of a noisier swing; the swing has less margin for error in timing the ball. See here for full article.

9. Thiem: “We saw Alcaraz but also Sinner at the US Open, these guys are changing the game in their own way, in terms of speed and aggression. From one end of the match to the other, whatever the score and even on very important points, they are fully committed, they take enormous risks and I find that we had never really seen that in the past. Even Roger, Rafa and Novak are playing a bit safer.”

10. I do see it in Medvedev and some others still.

11. Murray is so damn good. It’s ridiculous this guy only has three slams.