Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
THE BBC World Service has a nice little bit of listener interaction going.
It is about naming your own ‘Wonder of the World’, and so far I have heard people nominating bathrooms, soccer fields and even a shower as their own ‘Wonder of the World’.
There are as many choices as there are choosers really.
I too was tempted to make my own nomination as I watched Roger Federer take on Rafael Nadal in the Wimbledon final. My choice would, of course, be Federer. If no-one else, at least the man who put the board “GOD MADE ROGER FEDERER’ outside his house in Wimbledon will be happy with my choice.
It also coincides with Federer’s titanic victory over Rafael Nadal for his fifth successive Wimbledon title, a record he shares with Bjorn Borg. What a final, what a victory and what a man!
By all accounts it was the most fiercely contested final in any sport, individual and team sport included, in recent history. It was high-voltage stuff, constantly intense, bloodcurdling and, the fifth set in particular, heart stopping as Federer produced some scintillating shots to match the occasion.
Not since the days of Grand-masters and arch rivals Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov have we witnessed such celestial and cerebral stuff to turn sport into art as the ultimate set so well demonstrated.
Twice down 15-40 on his serve, the placid Swiss clawed his way back through his patented will power, and when he finally broke Nadal, the ‘mobile blast furnace’, as one reporter called him, in the sixth game, the title was destined to go only one way.
The sixth game was also the defining moment of the final: a 14-shot rally highlighted by balls screaming over the net insanely and ending with Federer pulling off a great forehand from his backhand side to pass Nadal for the decisive break.
“To see him play is kind of like an artist,” Bjorn Borg said. “It cannot happen to a nicer guy. No bad feelings.”
All this inevitably leads to that dreaded question again. Is Federer the greatest? It’s a FAQ, almost obvious and always tedious and qualified by time and totals.
Federer is on par with Borg and Rod Laver with 11 Grand Slams, just one behind Roy Emerson and three behind Pete Sampras’ record 14 (see box).
Now consider this. If all goes well, Federer is in line to equal or break Sampras’ record in a little over a year, by the 2008 US Open. And he would be only 27 by then. It means Federer will have at least four more years to build on that record if you take into consideration that Sampras won his last Grand Slam aged 31.
Here is another intriguing aspect. Borg retired at 25. Nadal, who already has three Grand Slams, is 21 and has been the World No 2 for 102 weeks now. And as Federer himself admitted after the final, the Spaniard is capable of ‘taking it all away’.
I will leave you to name your greatest on that note.
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It has been another good week for Bahrain sports with Yousef Falah winning the Masters title at the Gulf Youth Bowling Championship in Doha. It was a credible achievement and the icing on the cake was the 23-year-old’s victory over 2006 World Ranking Masters champion Khalid Al Dubyan of Kuwait in the title showdown.
Yousef was clearly the underdog because Khalid by then had already won four of the previous five events. But Yousef stayed focused and believed in himself to pull off a stunning victory. “I just stayed calm and played my game,” Yousef explained.
I think it is the perfect message to the Bahrain national soccer team who are presently in Jakarta playing in the Asian Cup.
By Vijay Mruthyunjaya
vmruthyunjaya@gmail.com
