Wimbledon 2012: Of Comparisons, Power and Responsibilities

Wimbledon represents – univocally – the highest echelon amongst Grand Slams. For this reason alone, the level of expectancy from the finals held on the Second Sunday here, for both players and their viewers, gets channelized onto more than a mere Grand Slam win. A Wimbledon final is unique and majestic, where dreams blend into reality; a place where everyone aspires to be but where only a few ultimately earn it.

Statistics and head-to-head counts don’t matter much when one is in the final, playing at the Centre Court. All that matters is that moment, a moment where every other failure is history and the coming few minutes and hours will chart yet another chronicle for the books. It doesn’t matter whether a player has been in the finals before and lost, all that matters is the player’s ability to regroup and re-fortify himself to make yet another attempt at winning. Probability doesn’t matter on the Centre Court, mental strength does.

Thus it isn’t about handling external pressure on the Second Sunday; it’s about handling oneself against the elements of ‘nature’. Elements, in the plural, with rain and weather interfering intermittently and with mind games not restricted to the opponent, but including the player himself. Like being in the eye of the storm, a finalist goes through it all – stupefaction, confidence, frustration, euphoria and even abject misery – only to come out forged as a totally new player, perhaps even better, than what he was before.

But in spite of newly forged potentialities, comparisons as an elemental facet never change. Both verbal and published, comparisons with legends and peers form an unavoidable factor, a factor that influences the thoughts and expectations of innumerable fans throughout the world. But how much do they actually influence the players themselves? Being compared and raised to the level of potential legends of the game is a great feeling, but alongside comes the mantle of pressure and responsibility. A mantle that is easily brittle while being difficult to hold and sustain.

‘With great power comes great responsibility’, said once, a fictional super-hero. But what fiction fails to mention and reality is quick to point out is, in order to be able to handle the responsible dispensing of power, one needs additional prowess of responsibility. For Roger Federer and Andy Murray, while it’s not about power dispensing, it’s still a matter of successfully handling that surplus responsibility to combat all the factors and elements, so as to come out triumphant in the sport’s most enthralling arena ever.