Roger Federer: The man who can do anything. Well, almost.

When Andy Murray broke down in tears during the trophy presentation ceremony, a friend of mine, who is a sworn Roger Federer fan, couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Aw, poor Andy! I feel really bad for him.” It took less than a second for another friend of mine, who is an even bigger Federer fan, to shoot back, with a fair amount of apoplectic rage, “What is wrong with you! Do you realize how much worse we would all have felt if it was FEDERER breaking down in tears instead of Murray? Just shut up and savor our guy’s victory!” The first friend, quickly regaining his composure, responded, “Oh yeah, you’re right. Sorry, I got a bit carried away. Suck it, Andy!”

Perhaps more than anything else, Federer’s victory at this year’s Wimbledon will be remembered for the tremendous wave of popular support he received during the tournament. In Wimbledon’s official gallery of images from yesterday’s final, there are some pictures of Murray fans sitting glumly or covering their faces with their hands; the idea must have been to showcase just how badly the Brits wanted Murray to win his first Grand Slam yesterday. But what the image gallery doesn’t show are pictures of the millions of fans across the globe who were cheering for Roger Federer as if their lives depended on his victory. These people had no regional, cultural or any other connection with Federer whatsoever. And yet they turned on their TV screens, in places ranging from Brazil to Egypt to India to Australia, and screamed their support for the Swiss Maestro till their voices gave out. They willed him to cut down on his unforced errors, and they prayed fervently for him to get to the finish line. After the match, I was told by at least two fully grown men that as Federer went down in tears on winning match point, they shed a few tears too. That may sound a little hard to believe, but from what I could tell, they weren’t joking. I can understand billions of Indians cheering as one for every boundary hit by Sachin Tendulkar, and I get why scores of Americans rooted vociferously for Michael Phelps to bring home all those golds in Beijing. But the almost universal adulation that Roger Federer enjoys has no parallel in modern sport.

It’s not like he needed all that support though. Yes, we can talk about how Murray came out like a man possessed, firing his forehand and making Federer look sluggish and overmatched in the first set. We can talk about how the loud and rousing support the local boy received from the spectators in Centre Court seemed to embolden Murray and deflate Federer. We can talk about how the profuse errors flowing off Federer’s forehand wing suggested that his mind was elsewhere. But his supporters should have known all along that in the final of a Grand Slam, at Wimbledon, Federer wasn’t about to walk off meekly into the sunset.

In the final yesterday, Federer did the thing that he does better than just about anybody else on the planet, and for which he doesn’t get nearly enough credit: he hung in there. After the (by his standards) disastrous first set, Federer continued to struggle in the second, but he did everything he needed to do to keep pace with his opponent. He took care of his serve, saving break points in the fifth and ninth games, and slowly cut down on his unforced errors. Murray was still dictating play (mid-way through the second set he was way ahead of Federer in the forehand winner count), but he wasn’t blowing Federer off the court any more. And then, at 6-5, with Murray serving to take the set to a tiebreak, Federer made his patented, snake-like move. He danced all around his backhand to control the rallies with his forehand, and on set point, played a spectacular point, ending it with a perfectly executed drop volley winner. Somehow, despite clearly being the second best player on the court, Federer had evened the match at one-set all.

With the sudden downpour necessitating the closing of the roof at the start of the third set, everyone knew that the shift in momentum, coupled with Federer’s legendary indoor brilliance, would tilt the scales heavily in the Swiss’ favor. And indeed, Federer took his game to another level in the last two sets. I had remarked a couple of days ago that Federer had eschewed the flashy stuff in favor of the boringly effective in his semifinal victory over Novak Djokovic. But yesterday, we got a healthy dose of the magic. Drop shots were conjured out of nowhere, seeming impossible returns were dug out and placed within inches of the baseline, and volleys were hit with an air of nonchalant brilliance. Special mention here must go to Federer’s backhand, which held up surprisingly well all tournament. He got the better of the backhand-to-backhand exchanges against both Djokovic and Murray, two players with perhaps the best backhands in world tennis today. In the first two sets yesterday, Federer’s backhand was actually his more reliable wing! Even some of the backhand returns that he absolutely crushed (he hit a clean crosscourt backhand return winner on one point that flew past Murray even though it was only a foot away from him) had ‘gorgeous’ written all over them.

And yet, in the middle of the third set, Federer made a conscious decision to run around his backhand on almost every Murray second serve. The ploy gave him about as many errors as it did winners (or winning set-up shots), and after a while Murray even got wise to it, hitting a couple of second serve aces by aiming for the forehand. The mind games made for some compelling viewing, but we also got the feeling that Federer would end up making a fool of himself if he kept at it much longer. But Federer stuck with the tactic anyway, and that’s when we realized just how great Federer’s forehand really is. No player in history has produced the kind of sustained devastation off a single shot the way Federer has with his forehand, and at the end of that 20-minute service game of Murray’s in the third set, the sheer magnificence of the Federer forehand was there for everyone to see. Federer had used his most lethal weapon to break not only Murray’s serve, but also his spirit. The result was never in doubt after that, which meant that we were treated to a display of vintage, flying Federer for the last half hour or so.

Another underrated aspect of Federer’s game that was on show yesterday was his adaptability. For the first set and a half, Murray had a couple of very important things going for him. For one thing, he had made the contest more about the return than about the serve; he had neutralized the threat of Federer’s superior serve by getting almost every return back in play, and had exposed Federer’s declining return skills by getting a lot of free points off his own serve. The other advantage Murray enjoyed was perhaps a bit more expected: he was outlasting Federer in the rallies, making Federer hit more shots (and consequently, more errors) on every point. But Federer turned both those things around so subtly that we didn’t even notice. By the middle of the match, Federer was reading Murray’s serve a lot better, and was getting just enough returns in play to put pressure on Murray to come up with effective follow up shots. And he countered the advantage Murray held in the long rallies by dialing up the aggression – he approached the net as many as 68 times in the match, winning a healthy 53 (78%) of those points. Tennis’s ultimate strategist (that’s Murray, in case you’re wondering) had been out-thought, and ultimately, outplayed.

We thought it couldn’t be done. We wondered whether he might be better off retiring from the game. We questioned his motivation levels. And we laughed at his proclamations that he wanted to regain the No. 1 ranking. In one fell swoop, Federer has shut up his doubters, perhaps for good. Through his game (the Federer we got to see in the semis and the finals was very close to ‘The Mighty Fed’, that exalted creature that roamed the tennis courts back in 2006 and 2007) and his desire, Federer has proven that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that is out of his reach. The man is well past the age of 30, yet he’s beating up on opponents in the prime of their careers, AND looking like the fresher player at the end of every hard-fought battle. This is his first Slam victory in over two years, but considering the volume and quality of victories he has slowly accumulated since the US Open last year, it will be hard to find anyone who doesn’t think he’s the best player in the world right now.

Is there anything that Federer can’t do? Yes, there is – he can’t calm the nerves of all of his fans who sweat buckets and start having palpitations at every small mis-step that he makes. But if he could, that would deprive those fans of the unadulterated joy they experience when their hero overcomes all the odds and comes out the champion. Success only has meaning if there are obstacles in the way, and it is sweetest when you experience the most depressing of lows before getting to the most dizzying of highs. By that measure, this victory of Federer’s is probably among the sweetest and most meaningful triumphs the game of tennis has ever seen.

His fans, all the millions of them, would certainly agree.