Wimbledon 2013: Titans fall, but the show must go on

However in spite of this awareness, the manner of defeats and eventual dethroning will always continue to remain a mystery. Injuries, age, lack of practice or even inability to adjust to newer playing conditions or simply a sudden desire to take a backseat from one’s life-long passion; the causes could be various but at the end of the day, these causes are merely handy tools for nature to take its own recourse in well-set plans.

Fans, of course would defend the losses and even try to come up a reasonable argument for the defeats. My subjectivity towards Federer still refuses to give up stating his case over and over again after his loss to the Ukrainian. But however rational and pragmatic the explanations for players‘ losses, they end up as mere excuses against nature, not helping the players at all. Be it as it may, fans’ outcries of slippery courts and difficult playing conditions haven’t really done Federer and Nadal any favours but have rather evoked an official statement emphasising on the quality of the playing surface from the tournament officials.

The least then that fans can do is accept these defeats graciously; as graciously as the victories of the past have been welcomed and cherished. The next tournament’s always around and knowing that these players won’t be going anywhere – if they can help it – maybe their next attempt would indeed bag them yet another Slam.

Federer and Nadal – The legendary duo

Number-crunching however is the domain of statisticians, and both Federer and Nadal have provided aplenty to keep the statisticians busy. They are undoubtedly the greatest, as the number-crunchers themselves would agree. A loss or two doesn’t really matter then. Their names find mention in almost all of the roll-calls of tennis honours and will continue do so, in spite of these early shockers.

They are stand-alone epitomes of peerless eminence and nothing’s ever going to change that. Not now, not ever. This then is the ultimate miracle to behold and marvel at, for eternity to come.