Sports Saturday
A couple of times over the past two years I have invoked Tennyson’s “Ulysses” while talking about my favorite aging athletes, Roger Federer and Peyton Manning (here and here). Ulysses starkly sets forth two possible futures for those heroes who continue to defy Father Time:
Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
The gulfs washed Manning down last February and they did the same to Federer two weeks ago in the Wimbledon finals.
For a few brief moments, it appeared that Federer might indeed touch the Happy Isles of an improbable Grand Slam victory to add to his record total. Down 5-2 in the fourth set after having dropped two of the first three, he somehow fought back to extend the match into a fifth set.
But in the end, the younger Djokovic, who in commentator John McEnroe’s opinion boasts the best return-of-service in the history of the game, pounced on three of Federer’s second serves to break him in the tenth game to take the tournament. Being strong in will may not ultimately save one who has been made weak by time and fate:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
And yet maybe, after all, Federer did touch those happy isles where, according to Homer, Achilles strides over fields of asphodel. Ulysses is talking about the Elysian Fields, that place in Hades reserved for heroes and mortals related to the gods. If any tennis player has touched those shores while still alive, it is Roger Federer. There were people calling for his retirement two years ago and had he done so—think of retirement as a metaphorical death—he would have received a direct ticket. Instead, he chose to keep on seafaring, even though few thought he would make it to another grand slam final, much less win one.. Yet there he was, playing beautiful tennis and almost, almost, pulling out a victory.
“I’ll see you next year,” he said in the awards ceremony afterwards. One could almost believe him.