The extraordinary Resilience of the Alpine Goat

Ok, surely this post would have a better online reach if the title was a bit shorter. And if it contained the word “Federer”. Because it’s what this post is about.

I didn’t meet many celebrities in my life. Of the few I saw, the majority are tennis players. This is because I am a fan, it’s one of my two favourite sports (together with Biathlon) and also became a part-time job when I started writing about tennis on an Italian website.

Basically everyone, regardless of how much they know about tennis, heard these two words before: “Wimbledon” and “Federer”. They transcend the niche of tennis, they are common knowledge, public dominion. Therefore, any tennis fan needs to see Wimbledon, and to see Federer, at least once in their life. Seeing Federer in Wimbledon rewards double points.

Now, something not everybody knows: seeing Wimbledon is harder than seeing Federer. For almost any Federer match you can spend your money, buy a ticket and that’s it. But Wimbledon is a magic place, with its own tradition that never changed since the beginning of time.

Therefore, you can’t simply buy a ticket online like in any other major sports event. You can only do it the day before, for a reserved few hundred spots. Otherwise, you need to physically queue like in the good old times in front of the entrance. Tennis fans set their tent in the park the evening before and are ready to queue in the early hours of the morning to guarantee a ticket.

The only way to secure a spot in advance is through a lottery, called “the ballot”. You enter all your information on the website like if you are about to buy the ticket, and then you’re put into a list. In March the ballot takes place and if your name is chosen, you can then officially buy your ticket. Otherwise, see you in June for the queue. And if you have no luck, there is always Murray Hill, the little mound from where you can watch, at least, the big screen.

Roger Federer is the King of Wimbledon. The tennis player who won the most titles, eight. Is also the player with the most Major tournaments (called Slam) in history, and allegedly the best player ever.

This last point is very debatable: fans and journalists around the world argue about the concept of Greatest Of All Times. This feature in sports jargon is known with the acronym G.O.A.T. that of course is the base for many jokes. This explains what the title of the post is all about.

And now the bit of information that everybody was waiting for: Roger and I.

This picture represents the closest I ever got to Roger Federer: the day I visited Wimbledon, he wasn’t playing (on the Slam tournaments, players are on the court every second day), but he was around signing autographs, and I had the chance to snatch one.

I didn’t bring him much luck. The day after he suffered the earliest defeat in Wimbledon in 15 years (since he’s “Federer”) losing in the second round. It wasn’t the first time I saw him: earlier in that year, in February, I was living in Amsterdam and he joined a tournament in Rotterdam. A tournament in which he was the huge favourite. So I bought a ticket and watched him playing one of the ugliest matches ever in his career. He lost in the quarter-final.

Therefore I also went to watch him playing in Roland Garros, the second Slam tournament of the season, in May. That time he won the match, but then again lost in the quarter-final. And then came June and Wimbledon. All those bad results in a row ended up costing him the spot of #1 in the world, and I thought I should stop attending Federer’s matches. And so I did until the very opposite happened.

In 2016 Federer suffered his first major injury in his career, had to undergo surgery and skipped a big chunk of the season. In early 2017 he came back to play his first tournament after many months in Melbourne, another Slam. He was not the favourite anymore. Miles away from it. He fell to #17 in the ranking and apparently out of shape.

I was there and saw him struggling in the second round against a qualifier, playing rusty tennis. I remember leaving the stadium with the melancholy of knowing that he wasn’t the same Federer pre-injury anymore, and this would have been the last season of his career.

And as I know and understand tennis very well, he won the tournament; the first Slam after 5 years. Then after it, another Wimbledon and in 2018, aged 36, became again the number 1 in the ranking. By far the oldest ever. Guess where?

In Rotterdam.