The Tennis Shot that Inspired Me
My father was nervously pacing across the hall. A little while has passed after midnight, way beyond my bedtime. I was 12 years old then, and I had school the next day. My mother and sister were fast asleep in the other room. 7–7 was the score in the fourth set tie-break, in a match deemed as the greatest match ever played anywhere by John McEnroe. Yes, you guessed it right! I am talking about the 2008 Wimbledon’s men’s final match between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal. The tension in the room was palpable.
Roger Federer to serve his second of two serves. Federer serves to the backhand of Nadal. Nadal replies with a mistimed backhand which kind of lobbed into Federer’s path. Federer goes with an inside-in forehand. Nadal responds with a crosscourt double-handed backhand. Federer anticipating the crosscourt backhand, moves in that direction and sends a forehand down the line.
My eyes lit up, I thought it was the winner and was about to celebrate. Nadal somehow covers the distance, gets to the ball, and whips a forehand down the line from way behind the baseline. The ball falls just inside of the singles sideline leaving Federer gasping in thin air. I WAS STUNNED!! My jaw dropped to the floor, and I slumped to the ground in disappointment. WHAT A SHOT!! exclaimed my excited father clapping his hands.
It was 8–7 and Championship point to Nadal. I didn’t want Roger to lose the final to Rafa again, as I already witnessed it happen in the French Open a month earlier. But I guess I accepted the fate because Nadal now had the advantage with the mini-break and was serving for the Championship. I was so nervous for the next point that I covered my face with my hands, barely able to watch the television through the gaps of my fingers. My heart was pounding out of my chest.
Nadal serves to the backhand of Federer. Federer reacts with a backhand slice and sends it in the same angle and direction as the ball came in. From a plethora of shots to choose from, Nadal returns the ball to the same corner with his trusted crosscourt forehand, which was the shot used by Rafa 62 percent of the time in the match. The tactic Rafa used the entire game was to attack Roger’s one-handed backhand because everyone in the tennis world knew about the inconsistencies of Roger’s backhand.
The next shot that Roger played is arguably the most defining moment of the whole match, in my opinion, as it allowed Federer to stay in the game and take it to the fifth set. As the ball came in from Nadal’s crosscourt forehand, it was now Federer’s turn to come up with breathtaking inspiration. He sends the ball with a nerveless one-handed backhand down the line.
At first glance, I thought the ball was going out, but I was wrong. The ball falls safely in the corner pocket where the baseline and the singles sideline meet. THE CROWD ERUPTS! My joy knew no bounds. While praising Federer’s backhand, my father was also re-enacting and showing me the technique of it in the background.
The two best passing shots of the tournament, without a doubt, have just taken place on the last two points — Andrew Castle in his BBC commentary referring to both Federer’s and Nadal’s heroics on the last two points.
The next two shots saw a Federer forehand winner and a missed Nadal return, and just like that, it was two sets all.
In his New York Times article on Roger Federer titled “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” David Foster Wallace calls such events as “Federer Moments.” He writes, “The Moments are more intense if you played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do.”
Genius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting mortal way) reconciled — David Foster Wallace
This clutch, one-handed backhand winner by Federer is my favorite shot of all time. Even in the jaws of defeat, Roger comes up with magic. I guess that’s what LEGENDS are made of. Though I had an inclination for playing tennis before, this particular shot and match as a whole had opened the flood gates for me. It had inspired me to enroll myself in learning tennis at my local tennis club.
If one is observant enough, Inspiration can be found anywhere and everywhere. Some of the things I find inspiring — Roger Federer’s perfection, Kobe Bryant’s mentality, Sachin Tendulkar’s brilliance, Muhammad Ali’s movement, Khabib Nurmagomedov’s dedication, Manchester United’s comebacks, Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilus, Richard Feynmann’s teaching, Elon Musk’s engineering ideas, Martin Luther King’s speeches, Mahatma Gandhi’s relentlessness, Joan Didion and George Orwell’s writing, Kevin Hart and Ricky Gervais’s comedy, Sirivennala Sitarama Sastry’s songs and many more.
We as a collective are going through some of the biggest and the toughest challenges in the entire human history, say, the Covid-19 Pandemic, Racism, Climate Change etc. Through times like these, the things we draw inspiration from, will pull us through. Due to the Pandemic, my father lost his job, we were financially unstable, mentally I was exhausted and burnt out. I guess single handedly, by keeping active during the lockdowns through reading and journaling about the great men and women of this world and having that sense of purpose has got me over the finishing line.
Let me know who/what are your inspirations??
