FIVE years Rod Laver had to go to work for a living on the pro tennis circuit until the amateurs who ran the sport finally got the picture that tennis might grow if all the good players played against each other for money.
In the second year of the Open Era (1969), Laver won the Grand Slam, which he had also done in 1962, the last year before he turned pro. Forever left to our imagination is how many more than 11 slams the great Australian might have won and how much of a slam dunk it ultimately would have become to declare him the greatest tennis player who ever lived.
Maybe Laver is and always will be that, no matter how many slams Roger Federer goes on to win. The Swiss Maestro captured his 13th Grand Slam title yesterday after a dominant 6-2, 7-5, 6-2, victory over Andy Murray, to move just one away from Pete Sampras’s record 14.
Perhaps until Federer wins a French Open title to complete a personal Grand Slam of all four majors, which has only been accomplished by Laver, Roy Emerson Andre Agassi, Don Budge and Fred Perry, there will be no closure to the argument. Nor will there be any pass given to Federer for peaking at the same time as his three-time Roland Garros conqueror Rafael Nadal, perhaps already the greatest clay court player of all-time.
Opponents make legends, too, not just numbers. Laver had every shot, just like Federer, and he made them with wood rackets, yet against a field not nearly as deep as what Federer faces today. Today’s athletes eat better, train smarter, and, through the accident of birth, the greatest player of this generation has a chance to beat more good ones than Laver, or anybody, ever did.
All fat for the roaring fire that Federer, who in 2008 accomplished a slam semifinal, two finals and a title within 10 months of contracting mononucleosis, stokes. Just one championship now to go to Sampras, all 13 won in six years.
“I would have been disappointed losing today,” Federer said. “You feel you missed an entire year being so close with one semi and two finals, which don’t help me a lot anymore in my career.”
That was felt, too, by the people privileged to have watched all five of his U.S. Open titles in New York. Sorry, 36 years of my hard-boiled, hard-earned, professional cynicism melt at the sight of Federer elevating his game. I again become the fan just-turned journalist, feeling privileged to be in an athlete’s company.
Naturally, my list has dwindled. Michael Jordan, too, was not only better, but smarter, than everyone else. But I once did the hockey, not the basketball beat, and when Wayne Gretzky retired, I cried into my laptop that I would never see such athletic genius again.
Now that I do, 13 is just a number on the way to who knows how many. I dare say Federer can even stop now with a case still to be made that having won so much, so quickly, he is the most dominant male player ever.
