Getting used to Wimbledon without Roger Federer

Roger Federer at his post-match press conference. The Swiss maestro lost his second round clash at Wimbledon to Ukrainian Sergiy Stakovsky in four sets. (Getty Images)

The number on everyone’s lips at the end of Roger Federer‘s shock loss to Sergiy Stakhovsky in the second round of the Wimbledon Championships on Wednesday wasn’t seven (the number of times Federer has won Wimbledon), 17 (Federer’s Slam tally) or even 116 (Stakhovsky’s current ATP ranking).

It was 36 – the number of consecutive Majors at which Federer had reached the quarterfinals. Was it a cruel twist of fate that the streak had to end at the place where the Swiss had crafted his most everlasting legacy, and that too on the 10th anniversary of his first triumph there?

Maybe, but you’d be hard-pressed to complain about the fate of a man who had reached 36 freaking Slam quarterfinals in the first place. The number, like most things about Federer, is plain old surreal.

Not so surreal, though, was Federer’s play on Centre Court yesterday. It’s never a good thing to launch into a critique of the fancied player rather than celebrate the achievement of the unheralded one after an upset, but when it comes to Federer and Wimbledon, there simply is no way to avoid that.

SW19 is the place that Federer was born to rule, to turn into his own personal art gallery. No matter what happened at Paris or Rome or Melbourne, Federer always had Wimbledon. The home away from home, the last bastion, the seat of the empire – call it whatever you like, but there’s no going around that Wimbledon was Federer’s turf.

Holes had been blown in the edifice before, but never had it been razed to the ground. Never, until yesterday.

The forehand was off, there’s no doubt about that. At 5-5 in the second set tiebreaker, Federer missed a sitter putaway forehand after a big serve, handing the crucial mini-break to Stakhovsky. On two different break points at the start of the third set, Federer took control of the rally only to send a regulation forehand long on both occasions.

In the fourth set, he made a flurry of forehand errors to get broken for only the second time in the match. And just when you thought he was about to right the ship when he struck a searing forehand pass to save the first of two match points, he followed it up with a regulation error off his…backhand. There was just no escape route for Federer yesterday.

Of course, it’s easy to forget that the man on the other side of the net had as much of a part to play in the seismic upset as Federer’s subpar performance. So the question is: how did Stakhovsky do it?

He did it by hitting big. He did it by relentlessly attacking Federer’s backhand. He did it by employing that oldest of old-fashioned strategies, the classic serve-and-volley. But most importantly, he did it by believing in himself.

Sergiy Stakhovsky, the giant-killing underdog. The 27-year-old pulled off one of the biggest shocks, only three days into the Championships. (Getty Images)

Every time you thought the occasion would get to the Ukrainian and lead to a bunch of nervy errors, he came up with the goods. He stood firm in the second set tie-breaker, and remained steady on the break points he faced at the start of the third.

Stakhovsky attacked at every opportunity, and rarely missed. After that first squandered match point, the whole world would have expected him to let Federer back into the match. But he didn’t, and he has the biggest victory of his career to show for it.

There’s no good reason why Stakhovsky should have had the belief that he could upset Federer in the second round of a Slam, but his play exemplified some of the most unwavering self-confidence ever seen from a journeyman on a big stage.

Stakovsky came to play right from the start, and refused to be cowed down by the magnitude of the task he had set out to accomplish. Was he emboldened by fellow journeyman Steve Darcis‘s victory over Rafael Nadal in the first round?

Possibly. But knowing that something is possible is one thing, and going about doing that thing is quite another.

Stakhovsky sensed pretty early in the match that Federer was finding it difficult to find his range on his passing shots, so he stuck to the attack-the-net strategy diligently. But as any performance analyst will tell you, success is not just about choosing the right strategy; it’s also about execution.

And did Stakhovsky execute!

He showed incredible finesse in carving the most delicate of drop volleys, and remarkable athleticism in lunging for the most difficult stab volleys. He was like a wall at the net, and as the match progressed you could almost feel Federer’s growing frustration at being unable to find a way past the Ukrainian.

Could Federer have done anything differently, apart from cutting down his errors on the big points? From where I was watching, he could maybe have used a little more variety on his backhand passing shots.

He repeatedly aimed straight for Stakhovsky’s body when the latter came in on Federer’s backhand, and the commentators expressed surprise on more than one occasion at Federer’s seemingly newfound strategy. But if you’ve watched Federer over the past couple of years, you’d know that this wasn’t exactly new.

For a while now Federer has eschewed line-grazing passing shots in favour of the safer body blows that cramp the opponent. It could be that this ploy is something that he genuinely believes will reap him richer rewards, but the likelier explanation is that as the years have gone by, he’s simply lost the precision to consistently find the lines off his backhand.

In any case, the strategy worked for brief periods in the first two sets, but cost him dearly towards the end. The effectiveness of the passing shot at the body relies on the opponent being unable to handle the pace of the shot; in other words, its success depends on the opponent making an error. And as Stakhovsky’s confidence grew, he refused to miss; no matter how hard Federer struck the passer (at one point he belted it so hard that Stakhovsky had to duck out of the way), the Ukrainian managed to put the ball back in play.

Federer expected Stakhovsky to miss – and I suppose we all did, to some extent – but amazingly, Stakhovsky didn’t. This was the very personification of lights-out offensive tennis. Only, it came from Stakhovsky’s racquet, not Federer’s.

Roger Federer cut a forlorn figure as defeat loomed large. This was his first defeat to player ranked outside the top 100 since 2002. (Getty Images)

Stakhovsky now goes on to face Jurgen Melzer in the third round, where he will try to build on this career-defining victory and avoid the fate suffered by Steve Darcis. Where does Federer go from here?

In his post-match press conference he stated in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t thinking of retirement, and asserted that he was going to use his time off to work towards coming back stronger. Federer also said that he didn’t think he’s been playing all that badly this year, and that he still had time to turn this into a successful season.

The latter comment will no doubt raise an eyebrow or two, and may even prompt some to call Federer delusional. But is Federer the one who’s delusional?

The past three years or so have seen Federer struggle mightily against all kinds of opponents – grinders, big hitters, and now, serve-n-volleyers. The writing’s been on the wall for a while now, but we’ve been too enamoured by his sporadic bursts of artistry to notice that.

Federer’s play is in terminal decline, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

He’s not consistent enough to stay with his opponents on the slower claycourts, not quick enough to deal with the unpredictable bounces on grasscourts, and not strong enough to outhit the powerful baseline huggers on the medium-paced hardcourts. Not on the ridiculously consistent basis that we were all accustomed to, anyway.

So it’s just as well that we’ve now been given the most telling sign that was needed to shake us out of our stupor and recognise Federer’s inevitable downslide: the quarterfinal streak getting shattered at the hands of a rank outsider, and that too at Wimbledon, the place where it all started.

We know now that he can’t keep reaching the latter stages of Majors with his eyes closed; we know now that he is human.

As you scan the Wimbledon schedule in the coming days, it will probably hit you just as hard as it hit me today morning: the granddaddy of the Slams just doesn’t feel the same without Federer in the mix. Should we quietly try and get used to this ‘different’ Wimbledon, or should we take this moment to loudly bemoan the fading of one of the brightest lights to have ever shone upon the hallowed greens of London?

Whatever we decide, his fans will always have the memories of Federer’s glorious triumphs at Wimbledon over the past decade to look back fondly on.

If Federer always had Wimbledon, his fans, and the tennis world in general, will always have it too.