So Roger Federer is not perfect after all.
As he breezed into the semifinals of Australian Open 2011, his eighth consecutive appearance in the last four at Melbourne Park, Federer finally fessed up to his guilty secret. He nicks the Aussie Open towels, those nice, brightly coloured towels that retail for $55. And he nicks them at the rate of four a match. So far, he has filched 20 of the things and if he keeps playing the way he did to beat Stanislas Wawrinka 6-1, 6-3, 6-3, he may be walking away from Melbourne Park with 28 towels stuffed in his racquet bag.
Quite simply, Fed was fab and Stan could not get anywhere near him.
Federer and Wawrinka go back a long way. They are Davis Cup colleagues, practice partners and at the Beijing Olympics, they won the doubles gold medal together (Roger cried, natch). They are old mates and, as Federer pointed out, “there are no secrets between us”.
There are even fewer secrets now that Wawrinka is working with Peter Lundgren. It was Lundgren who coached the young Federer and turned him into a grand slam champion from being a talented but inconsistent young hopeful. There is not a lot that big Pete does not know about Federer.
He is working his magic on Wawrinka, too. They started working together last July and within weeks, the results were obvious. Wawrinka - or Stan to his pals - was always a solid player both technically and physically (he is built like a tank and has a backhand that many would pay serious money for) but he had a brittle temperament. If you pushed Stan too far, he cracked. Lundgren solved that little problem and Stan went on to reach the quarterfinals of the US Open.
Still, not any of that made the blindest bit of difference against Federer. The champion was in majestic form and he was having fun. Getting off to a flying start, he was in his favourite position - he loves to lead from the front - and he never looked back.
As if life was not difficult enough, Wawrinka was having a tough time convincing himself he was just playing his old mate Rodge and not the Mighty Fed, one of the greatest players ever to lift a racquet. Rodge, meanwhile, was playing as if it were an exhibition match. He only offered Wawrinka one glimmer of hope - one, single, solitary break point - but Stan fluffed it with a nervy backhand.
It was not that Wawrinka was playing badly, it was just that Federer was in total control. As Stan tried desperately not to let the second set slip away from him, Federer toyed with him. Oh, you’re at the net are you? Let’s try this then… there were drop shots, volleys, passes, reflex flicks, running forehands - there was everything bar the kitchen sink. This was ridiculous tennis for anyone to be playing, even the Mighty Fed, in a quarter final of a grand slam. He even tried a “tweener” and put on a master class in how to play that, too. “A short follow through is critical,” Jim Courier observed, sounding like a man who had tried a tweener once before and still bore the scars.
The longer Federer stays in the tournament, the better he gets. The pressure is mounting and the opponents are getting stronger, but Federer is simply going through the gears. “I think it happens naturally to any player who goes deep into a tournament,” Federer said, as if winning grand slam titles was as straight forward as making a cup of tea. “It’s almost normal to play better. As the opponents get better, it’s more difficult to win but it’s nice - the ball that’s coming at you.” Wawrinka may take a bit of convincing on that point but Fed did not care.
So, Federer is now two matches away from his 17th Grand Slam title. And eight more half-inched towels away from rewriting the record books yet again.
